GRIMM’S STORY

By Vernor Vinge

The planet called Tu is a world of oceans and scattered archipelagoes. Tu has a sister planet, Seraph, hanging eternally fixed in her sky—a more tantalizing goal for space flight than our Moon. But Tu’s thousand-year-old civilization has almost no metals. With a wood-glass-and-plastics technology, the island people have hydrofoils, telescopes, even photography, but no heavier-than-air craft, let alone spacecraft: they can only look up and wonder.

Stories like this, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, are written for the delight of imagining a whole new world, with its continents, islands, plants, animals, people. Here, then, is the story of the Chainpearl Archipelagate, of Krirsarque and Bay fast; of the Tarulle Barge; of Tatfa Grimm and Svir Hedrigs—and of their bold attempt to steal from Tar Benesh, the Regent of Crownesse, the only complete collection of a seven-hundred-year-old magazine called Fantasie, whose motto is, “Things are not what they seem.”

The tavern was old, luxurious—even respectable. Its sloping dance floor and high ceiling created the illusion that the hall was an open amphitheater. Crystal spheres cast an even, unwavering twilight over tables and patrons. Svir Hedrigs squinted gloomily at the newly polished table surface. Barely visible under the varnish were three centuries of minor vandalism. Krirsarque had been a university city for almost ten generations, and during that time, unnumbered students had carved their names in the durable furniture of the Bayside Arbor.

It was still early and not a third of the tables were occupied. The jongleurs were up on their platform, playing songs and doing acrobatics. So far their amusements had not drawn a single couple onto the dance floor. Hedrigs grunted his disgust, and extended long knobby legs under the table. He absently caressed the furry body of the creature sitting on the table. The animal turned its outsize head toward him and regarded the man with limpid black eyes. A deep purring sound came from its wide, pointed ears. Then it turned away and scanned the hall, its tall ears flicking this way and that. Far across the hall, a waiter looked severely in their direction, began walking toward them. When he got to within three tables of Hedrigs, he stopped, puzzled, with the air of someone who has forgotten his purpose. The waiter shook his head confusedly and headed back to the bar.

“Good boy,” murmured Hedrigs. Tonight he didn’t want to argue with anyone about his pet’s presence in the tavern. Svir had come out for one last fling before sailing tomorrow. Fling—ha! He knew he would just sit lumpishly till closing time. For the thousandth time he cursed his bad luck. Who’d have thought that his thesis topic would require him to sail all the way to Crownesse? Because of the season, that was more than ten days’ sailing time, unless one could afford hydrofoil passage— which he certainly could not.

The hall was filling now, but as he surveyed it, Hedrigs concluded with sick self-pity that this night he didn’t have the courage to tour the tables, importuning unattached girls. He slouched back and made a determined effort to finish his drink in one draft.

“May I join you?” The soft voice came from behind and above. Hedrigs choked violently on his skaal, spewing the liquid in all directions. His fit of choking gave him a chance to see that the speaker was as pretty as her voice.

“Please do!” He gasped painfully, trying to regain some shred of poise. “Miss, uh—?”

“Tatja Grimm.” The miracle lowered herself gracefully into the chair next to his, and set her drink on the table next to Ancho’s right forepaw. Svir felt himself staring. He daydreamed of encounters like this constantly, but now that he was confronted by reality he didn’t know what to do or say. Tatja Grimm was certainly not pretty: she was beautiful, beautiful in an especially wonderful way. From a distance she would have appeared to be a slender girl with a superb figure and reddish-brown hair. But Tatja Grimm was more than six feet tall— nearly as tall as Hedrigs himself. Her hands were slim and delicate—and larger than the hands of most men. But the most wonderful thing of all was the look of genuine interest and intelligence in her gray-green eyes. She was interested in him.

“And your name?” Tatja smiled dazzlingly.

The wheels went round and Svir remembered his name: “Svir Hedrigs.”

Tatja rubbed Svir’s pet about the neck. “And that,” said Svir, happy at finding something to say, “is Ancho.”

“A dorfox? They’re awfully rare, aren’t they?”

“Uh-huh. Only a few can survive ocean voyages.”

Tatja played with Ancho for a few seconds. The dorfox responded with satisfied humming. The human female was accepted.

Hedrigs’ hopes were shattered almost as quickly as they had crystallized. Three men came over and sat down, without a word to Svir.

“Miss Grimm, did you—?” one began. Then he noticed the dorfox. The newcomers sat silently and watched her and the animal. Svir didn’t know what was going on, but now he didn’t care. There was obviously more competition here than he could handle.

Tatja Grimm looked up from the dorfox. “Men, this is Svir Hedrigs. Svir, meet Brailly Tounse, Rey Guille, and Kederichi Maccioso. They are respectively the First Proofreader, General Fiction Editor, and Ship’s Captain for Fantasie magazine. I serve as the Science Editor.”

Like hell, thought Svir. He knew he was being taken. Svir was a naturally gullible person. Once, in this very tavern, a couple of netscrapers had managed to convince him they were hot-air balloonists. Since then, he had been always on his guard. There were several good reasons why his new “friends” were frauds. In the first place, the Tarulle Publishing Barge wasn’t due in the Krirsarque area for another three days. Svir had been very upset to learn that his ship would stay a day ahead of the Tarulle fleet as the publishing company sailed slowly east along the Chainpearl Archipelagate. He wouldn’t receive the latest copies of Fantasie—all two years’ worth—until he reached Bayfast in Crownesse. In the second place, the Tarulle Barge rarely landed at minor places like Krirsarque. The Barge dispatched its hydrofoil sailing boats for such contacts. These boats delivered the company’s publications, and took aboard supplies and manuscripts. People like Rey Guille and Ked Maccioso were far too important and busy to leave the Barge. The frauds at his table had aimed far too high in their impersonation. Of all the literary corporations in the world—fiction or non-fiction, periodical or book—Fantasie was perhaps the most prestigious. Hedrigs had always admired Rey Guille and the managing editor, Spektr Ramsey. And never had he seen a Science Section in Fantasie, or heard of Tatja Grimm.

Well, determined Svir Hedrigs, I can trade them lie for lie. Aloud he said, “So happy to meet you. I find a lot of your stuff especially provocative since my specialty is astronomy.”

“An astronomer?” They were obviously impressed. Even the over-muscled bruiser identified as Ked Maccioso seemed interested.

“That’s right,” Svir affirmed. And, actually, he was an astronomer. But the others naturally assumed from his unmodified assertion, that he was one of those intrepid souls who manned the ninety-inch reflector in the Doomsday Mountains on The Continent. Life at the Doomsday Observatory was a constant struggle against asphyxiation, cold, mountain apes, and Hurdic tribesmen. “I came out here to deliver some speeches at Krirsarque University.” This last was an inversion of the truth. Svir was a graduate student in astronomy at Krirsarque. For the last two years he had worked with the thirty-inch telescope at the university. The most recent publisher coming west from The Continent had brought news that the men at Doomsday had duplicated some of Hedrigs’ work. Now Svir had to journey all the way to the coast of The Continent to meet with one of the Doomsday astronomers and thrash the problem out.

“What’s your preference in astronomy?” asked Tatja. “Seraphy?”

“No,” replied Svir. “Seraph’s not visible from Doomsday. I’m in a new field—parallax astronomy. Using very delicate trig techniques, I’ve measured the distances to some of the nearer stars.”

“Really! I bought an article on that very subject for the latest issue.” She snapped her fingers. “Brailly Tounse” reached into a side pouch and handed Tatja a magazine. She gave it to Svir. “See.”

Svir gasped. There was the familiar masthead of Fantasie. In small letters beneath it were the words: “Issue of the 162nd Meridian. Whole Number 10,039.” Here was physical proof that the Tarulle fleet had already arrived. With the quivering ecstasy of a long-time addict, he drooled over the Togoto cover, and then the table of contents. Beneath the magazine’s famous motto, “Things are not as they seem,” were listed fifteen stories and novelettes by authors from all over the world. A new short by Ivam Alecque, a serial by Tsumish Kats … Svir flipped through the pages and came across one that caught on his fingers. It wasn’t made of the usual seaweed pulp, but of some heavier, lacquer-coated material. At the top of that page was written: “Meet the Fantasie staff.” Below were six portraits done in tones of green. But they weren’t acid-etch prints, or even hand paintings. These pictures were green-tinted windows revealing perfect likenesses of Tatja Grimm and the men seated at Svir’s table.

Hedrigs wondered if he looked as embarrassed as he felt. These people were everything they claimed to be. And now Tatja Grimm was even more desirable—if that were possible—than she had been before.

Grimm placed her hand on his forearm as she saw what Svir was looking at. “How do you like those pictures? That’s a development we picked up in the Osterlei Archipelagate. Those pictures are made by a machine that looks at its subject and instantly ‘paints’ the picture, just like in the Diogens stories.” Tatja slipped her hand down onto his. For a moment Svir’s vision blurred. A warm glow spread through his body. “My picture is at the bottom there because the Science Department was only introduced last year, when dear old Spektr gave in to the increased popularity of contrivance fiction.

“I can tell you are a fan. How long have you been reading Fantasie?”

“Ever since I was seven. Twenty years. The Tarulle Barge has come through the Archipelagate ten times in that period. I’ve looked forward to each arrival more and more eagerly. I’ve even collected some issues from the last century.”

Tatja laughed, a friendly, intimate chuckle. The men at the table receded into the back of Svir’s consciousness. “That’s a worthwhile project. Do you know that in all the world, there is only one complete collection of Fantasie?”

“You mean the proof copies on the barge?”

“No. Not even the Tarulle Company has a complete set. Remember, there was a fire on Old Barge three hundred years ago, and all the copies to that date were lost. Up to twenty years ago, there were more than twenty-five complete collections, but a series of accidents has destroyed all but one.” She put a faint accent on the word “accidents.”

Hedrigs had never thought about it, but it certainly was possible that only one complete collection existed. As the Tarulle Company toured the world, they sold their magazines, and printed extra copies to drop off at later island chains. Delivery was quite unreliable compared to a subscription service, such as some island magazines used. Thus it was very difficult to get a continuous sequence of issues. And Fantasie was seven hundred years old. Even though most issues had been recopied and their stories anthologized, so that any major library contained thousands of stories from the magazine, there were still “lost” issues unavailable on the Chainpearls.

The person or government that possessed the complete set must be very wealthy and dedicated to culture. “Who has the collection?” asked Svir.

“The Regent of Crownesse, Tar Benesh,” Tatja answered.

Svir frowned. Tar Benesh had never impressed him as a man of high taste. He almost missed what Tatja Grimm said next. She was looking directly at him, and her lips barely moved. She seemed to be preoccupied with something far away.

“It’s too bad Benesh is going to destroy them.”

“What! Why? Can’t he be stopped?” His shocked questions tumbled over each other. Why would anyone want to destroy seven hundred years of Fantasie? The epic cycles, the ingenious short stories—all those glimpses into worlds-that-are-not—would be lost.

Tatja’s hand tightened around his. Her face came near his and he heard her say, “Perhaps there is a way to stop him. With you and your dorfox perhaps—”

“Please, Miss Grimm, not here!” Ked Maccioso leaned forward tensely, at the same time glancing around the tavern. Svir’s domain of attention expanded. He realized that now the Arbor was crowded, the dance floor overflowing, and the jongleurs in fine form on their resonation platform. Tatja’s presence had made him completely unaware of the changes.

Grimm nodded to the heavy ship’s captain. “I suppose you’re right, Ked.” She turned back to the astronomer. “When were you planning to return to The Continent, Svir?”

Return? Then Svir remembered the lie he had told them. But he couldn’t reveal his fraud to her now. He wanted, needed, the interest Tatja was showing him.

“I sail tomorrow for Bayfast.”

“Would you like to come on the Tarulle Barge? It’s slower than hydrofoil, but we’ll get you there just the same.”

“I certainly would.” The words came spontaneously, but he felt no desire to retract them. Imagine sailing off with a beautiful, famous girl—into adventure. His previous reality seemed pale indeed beside these prospects.

“Why don’t you come out to Barge with us tonight? We’ll show you around.” She looked straight into his eyes. The men with her watched carefully, too. They couldn’t talk here.

“Okay.” Svir set Ancho on his shoulder. They all stood up and worked their way to the door. The music and party sounds faded as they descended the ancient stone stairs that led from Highrock to the wharves of the Krirsarque harbor.

Soon Maccioso was paddling them out to sea. Apparently the landing was a secret. It was well into the night sleep period and no other craft were moving. A breeze swept across the water, splashed luminescing algae into the boat.

Half an hour passed. No one spoke. Ancho shivered quietly, fearful of the water. They left the glowing waters of the harbor behind. It was quite cloudy, so even the light of Seraph was denied them. Gradually Svir convinced himself that there was a greater darkness on the water ahead of them. And then he was sure. The huge pile of the Tarulle Publishing Barge rose tier upon tier out of the ocean. Beside it floated the smaller forms of scout hydrofoils. All were without lights.

They pulled over to the hulk, and a group of company sailors pulled the little boat into a freight bay. A section leader saluted Maccioso. She said, “XO’s compliments, sir, and no exterior activity noted.”

Maccioso returned the salute. “Have him take us out past the shelf.”

Svir was escorted up a long corridor, into the heart of the vessel. They entered a luxurious, brightly-lit room. Just the maintenance of the algae pots must cost several man-hours a day. The five seated themselves around a table, on which was fastened a detailed map of Bayfast, the capital of Crownesse.

“This must all seem a bit melodramatic, Svir,” said Tatja, “but Tar Benesh has an efficient spy system extending from Crownesse on The Continent all the way to the Osterlei Archipelagate. The Regent is ambitious without limit. He—”

Ancho began nibbling at the map. As Svir pulled him back, the animal keened an almost inaudible whistle. For an instant everyone in the room felt stark terror. Then Hedrigs patted the little animal, and the dorfox relaxed. The feeling of panic disappeared. Ancho turned his large eyes toward Hedrigs as if to ask forgiveness.

Tatja smiled shakily. “Tar Benesh is also an extremely intelligent, capable individual. And he is—mad. Or perhaps he is just alien. Some rumors hint that he is actually a Wildman from the center of The Continent.

“Since he came to power twenty years ago, he has been a collector of Fantasie. And to enhance the value of his wealth, we believe that he sabotaged other collections.”

“We know for a fact that he has destroyed other collections,” Rey Guille interrupted.

“Every five years, Benesh holds the Festival of the Ostentatious Consumption. You may have heard of it—”

Svir gulped. “You’re not trying to tell me that the Fantasie collection is going to be one of the sacrifices?”

Tatja nodded her head slowly, “Yes, that’s it exactly. The Festival is scheduled to begin ten days from now. We plan to arrive in Bayfast on the night wake period of the Consumption.” She gestured to the map of the Bayfast area, and the detailed floor plans of Tar Benesh’s Keep. “I can’t go over the details of the plans now, but we are going to try to save that collection. Our magazine has the unconditional backing of the entire Tarulle Company,” she nodded at Maccioso, “in this venture. It’s not going to be easy. But I think we could succeed if we had Ancho’s help. And we need you too. You know Ancho best, and can persuade him to cooperate.”

Svir glanced down at the little mammal, who sat licking his paws, unaware of the plans being made for him. “Yes,” the astronomer answered, “dorfoxes are strange that way. They will answer to only one master at a time. And no one can predict exactly when they will change loyalties.”

“Svir, this will be dangerous. But we need you. And some of the stories Benesh has, exist nowhere else. Will you come with us and help?” She was pleading.

Hedrigs suddenly realized what he was being asked to do. He could get killed—and all for some magazines. Before now he had been uneasy at the mere thought of traveling to Crownesse, and now he was going to risk his life in a plot against the government of that country. Some sensible element within him was screaming No—no—no! But he saw the pleading in Tatja’s eyes. “Yes,” he quavered, then continued more strongly, feigning confidence, “I’ll be glad to do anything I can.”

“Wonderful!” said Tatja. She stood up. “Now I’m sure you’ll want to go ashore and get your stuff together. Ked will have a boat take you back.” The group left the room and walked toward the outer hull. About halfway there, Tounse and Guille left them for the typeset area. The walk gave Svir time for some heart-stopping second thoughts. He had a vivid imagination and it was working overtime now. Ancho responded uneasily to his fright, moving nervously on his neck.

They reached the landing bay, and Maccioso went off to get a crew. Tatja turned to Svir. She grasped his hand gently and moved close. “Thank you, Svir. I want to save that collection very much. But I think I want to see you again even more. You’ll be back tomorrow, won’t you?”

She slipped her arms around him. He felt her body against him, her lips against his. His fears and half-conscious plans to junk the whole project were erased. He would be back.

It was well past midmorning, Hedrigs stood, with Ancho on his shoulder, at the edge of the false deck which reinforced the Barge’s bowform. Tatja had said she’d meet him here and take him on a tour.

The Tarulle Barge was especially impressive by day. Over the centuries, it had grown helter-skelter. New barge platforms had been added and built upon—then built over again, until the mass resembled nothing so much as a man-made mountain of terraces, cupolas, and cranes. The top offices and printshops were of spun glass —the most modern construction material. The bottommost members of the Barge were moldering timbers three hundred years old. From the top of the mainmast to the bottom of the lowest hold was almost three hundred feet.

Now the huge filmy sails were close-hauled as the Barge tacked in the thirty-mile Monsoonal Drag that blew steadily off The Continent.

Hedrigs grabbed the terrace rail to steady himself in the wind. Just looking up at those masts was enough to make him dizzy. He turned his attention to the ocean and the whitecapped waves that stretched out to the horizon. In winds like this, the sailing hydrofoils were at top efficiency, getting up to almost fifty miles an hour. Two Company scouts cut through the farther waters as they sailed out to minor ports of the Chainpearl Archipelagate.

And the Tarulle fleet was not alone on the main. Svir could pick out three cargo barges at various distances. The Chainpearls lay along one of the busiest trade routes in the world.

For all their cultural importance, the publishing lines accounted for only a small fraction of total ocean tonnage. Most publishing enterprises were operated landside, and contracted with freighting companies to serve other islands. Relatively rare nowadays were the huge publishing barges, like Tarulle, which toured the entire world and printed a variety of books and magazines.

“Hey, Svir!” Tatja’s voice came clearly over the wind. He turned to see her striding toward him. Her hair was caught in a soft reddish swirl tied with a clip to the front of her tunic. Even so the wind blew it back and forth to caress the side of her face. She seemed small and delicate even in her baggy work coveralls, but when she came near, her eyes were level with his. Her smile sent a long shiver down his spine.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t get together earlier in the morning,” she continued, “but things are really moving around here. This Chainpearl run is always the busiest of the circuit, and when we have Monsoon winds, every printer is running at the breaking-point.”

“Uh, that’s all right—I’ve had plenty to see,” he replied. As a matter of fact, the wake period had been something of a bore so far. The crew was distinctly hostile toward nonessential personnel. Since lunch he had wandered about the decks. His ears still burned from insults received when he walked in a door marked TRIPULATION ONLY. The people weren’t really stranger-haters, though. They just didn’t want nonprofessionals messing up their work.

Svir and Tatja started toward a nearby stairway. Grimm looked at the dorfox. “Say, I’m glad you brought Ancho. He looks fine. Can I carry him? We’ll have to be real careful: some of the areas I’ll show you could affect him. But I want to see how hardy he is.”

Svir handed the dorfox over. Ordinarily the little animal didn’t enjoy being fondled by others, but he had taken a liking to Grimm. Ancho had recovered from his initial fear of sailing, though even now he clutched at Tatja’s shoulders tightly. Dorfoxes came from a single island far around the world. They were long-lived and relatively infertile. Most dorfoxes became mortally seasick when taken aboard a ship. Ancho was an exception. Betrog Hedrigs, the great Continental explorer and Svir’s grandfather, had brought the animal to Krirsarque forty years before. Ancho was probably the only dorfox in the Chainpearls. Perhaps it was just as well though, for if dorfoxes had been common, they would have turned society upside down. Their strange abilities would give criminals almost supernatural powers.

Svir and Tatja descended two flights to the vat holds. It was a different world, a claustrophobe’s nightmare. The wind was no longer audible, but there was an ominous creaking from the hull of the barge platform. Dim orange light filtered from half-dead algae pots. Worst of all was the smell. Svir had been raised near the ocean, and so was virtually unaware of any special odor associated with the seas. But here, in these vats, the essence of those smells was being distilled.

Some of the workers actually smiled at them: Tatja’s presence was safe conduct.

Tatja pointed to where the ocean water came in through the bowform. “The whole paper-making operation runs at just the speed that water can flow through these hulls. We’re at the input now. If we walk to the stern, we’ll see every stage of the processing.”

The seawater flowed through the underpart of the Barge like a subterranean river. Narrow catwalks hung inches above the dark water. Every forty feet, they had to climb a short flight of steps and then down again, as they moved from the hull of one barge platform to the next. They walked about two hundred feet through the gloom. Hedrigs admired the graceful way Tatja moved along the catwalk, and cursed his own fearful, halting pace. Below them the liquid had thickened and now flowed slowly past grinding wheels. Beyond this, it was divided into several streams, depending on which reagents were to be added to the conglomeration of sargasso, algae, and animalcules that composed the slimy mass. They followed the stream of sludge that was destined to become paper.

All the way, Tatja gave a running account of what was going on. She also kept a close eye on Ancho for any signs of nausea or disorientation. But the dorfox seemed quite calm. It was a different story for Svir. The stench was beginning to get to him. Finally he asked, “How can the hull take these chemicals? I should think it would rot in a matter of months.”

“That’s a good question,” the Science Editor responded. “The processing seems to have just the opposite effect. The carbonates and silicates in this sludge replace the wood fiber on a microscopic level. Over the years the hull has actually become stronger. And what we discharge beneath the hull is so concentrated, it kills any parasites that might otherwise nest there. Oops!”

She slipped on the walk. Svir’s arm reached out and grabbed her waist as Ancho caught at his collar. The three of them teetered precariously for a moment. Then Tatja laughed nervously. “Thanks.”

Svir felt obscurely proud. He might move more slowly than she, but when it came to a test, his caution paid off. He didn’t remove his arm from her waist

At last they reached the stern. Here the remaining water was pressed from the bleached mass, and the paper was actually formed. The fine sheets hung for several days before they were wound on drums and taken up to Printing.

They walked up to the next deck, where tons of newly printed magazines were stored. Here too the light was dim, but there was only a faint musty smell. Thank God the final product didn’t smell like seaweed, thought Svir.

Tatja hung close on his arm and became more talkative. The Tarulle Company put out five different magazines every sixteen days. Fantasie and a couple of girlie magazines accounted for four hundred thousand copies per issue, and provided the bulk of the Tarulle income. Since it was necessary to stock copies for as long as two years before they were sold, the Barge normally carried eight tons of magazines. Over the centuries it had been a race to keep up with world population increase. The Barge was now more than ten times as large as its first platform. All the latest machinery was employed. But even with increased landside printing and the prospect of writing machines to replace hand type-setting, they were still falling behind.

It suddenly came to Hedrigs that he was being chased. It was subtle, but this girl was falling all over herself to please. She gave forth with a continuous stream of highly animated speech, and at the same time took every opportunity to draw him out. Hedrigs felt himself warm even more to the miracle at his side.

They came to one of the loading ports. The sound of the wind came strong, and beyond that huge hole in the hull was a panorama of sky and sea. Less than twenty feet away floated one of the fifty-ton hydrofoils that did most of the delivery work for the Barge. Its sails were reefed and its boom masts were in the vertical position, permitting it to move close to the larger vessel. A fifteen-ton load of magazines was being hoisted onto the hydrofoil by one of the Barge’s cranes.

They watched the scene for several minutes. Finally the operation was complete, and the boat pushed away from the Barge. Its booms were lowered and the sails— like sheets on a clothesline—were hung out. As it moved out of the Barge’s wind shadow, it gathered speed, and the outermost studding sails tilted queerly into the wind. The whole affair lifted up on the slender stilts of its foils, and the boat moved away at nearly forty miles an hour. Then the Barge’s crewmen closed the loading port and everything was dim again.

Tatja frowned. “You know, I’ve always wondered why they tilt the studding sails like that.”

Hedrigs grinned broadly and gave her an explanation of Dertham’s pressure theories, complete with an analogy to tacking. Grimm’s eyes showed scarcely concealed admiration. “You know, Svir, that’s the first clear explanation I’ve ever heard of that. You ought to try writing it up. I could use some decent articles.”

Hedrigs’ collar shrank about three sizes.

Then he noticed Ancho. “He’s glazing over,” he said, indicating the animal’s eyes.

Tatja agreed, “So I see. We’d better cut things short. It’s almost suppertime anyway. We’ll just take a short look at the print deck, and leave the typeset and editorial offices for another time.”

They went up another stair and entered a low room filled with whirling gears. Hedrigs wondered if all vessels were this crowded. It destroyed the romantic air he had always associated with sailing. He noticed that Tatja kept a close hold on the dorfox and petted him comfortingly. This was no place for Ancho to run about unprotected.

There were two machines in the room, but only one of them was in operation. At one end of the printer, a yard-wide roll of sea-paper unwound. The paper slid between two rotating drums. The upper one was inked and with every swift revolution it pressed at least twelve feet of print on the flowing paper. Beyond this first pair of drums, a second pair did the same for the underside of the sheet. The paper finally moved under a whirling glass flywheel that cut it into neat, yard-square sheets that landed in a small dolly, ready to be taken to the cutting and binding section. The machine was driven by a spinning shaft connected to the windmills on the main deck.

One of the print men looked up angrily and started toward them. Then he recognized Tatja Grimm, and his manner changed. Up close, Hedrigs saw that the ink-stained face belonged to Brailly Tounse. “Day, ma’am,” Tounse shouted over the din. “Anything we can do for you?”

“Well, if you have a couple minutes, could you describe your operation, Brailly?”

Tounse seemed momentarily surprised, but agreed. He took them down the print line and traced the progress of the paper through the machine. “Right now we’re doing almost five thousand impressions an hour—that’s about one hundred thousand pages after cutting. Sometimes we go for months with hardly a breeze, but when we move into the Drag we have to make up for it. I’m pushing these machines at their physical limit right now. If you could get us just twenty ounces of steel, Miss Grimm, we could make some decent bearings, and run these things as fast as the wind can blow—about twelve thousand impressions an hour.” He looked at Tatja expectantly.

Grimm smiled, and shouted back. “Brailly, I’ll bet there isn’t fifty ounces of steel in the whole Barge.”

Hedrigs was confused. Since when does a Chief Proofreader ask a Science Editor for mechanical help—and for something as ridiculous as steel! Perhaps the fellow was just teasing, though he certainly looked serious enough.

Tounse grimaced, wiped his greasy hand over his bald head, leaving a broad black streak. The man was obviously exhausted. “Well,” he said, “you might as well stick around and see them install a new print board on the other machine.” He indicated the idle printer.

Several crewmen brought in four yard-square sheets of rubbery printboard. The elastic base made it possible for them to stretch the type across the drum and fasten down the edges. The ironwood-sap type-pieces gleamed dully in the light. In a few moments they would be black with ink. When the first four sheets were properly tied down, the workers moved down the line and tacked four more on the underside printer. Then they handfed twenty feet of roll paper through the machine.

Tounse nodded to the man at the clutch. The gearing engaged. Perhaps the fellow released the clutch too fast. Or perhaps the gearing was fatigued. Svir never knew the exact cause, but the machine was transformed into a juggernaut. Gears splintered and paper billowed wildly about him. The first print-drum precessed madly and then flew off its spindle, knocking all three of them against the first machine. The glass blade at the far end of the room shattered and slivers flew about the room. Even though declutched, the machinery took seconds to slow and stop.

Hedrigs picked himself up carefully. Tounse was all right, though he seemed on the verge of breaking down himself—printing machines just weren’t supposed to behave like this! Svir dragged Tatja from beneath the drums. She sat up and looked at him, dazed.

“Svir, are you all—where’s Ancho!”

The dorfox was gone. Tatja swore in a most unladylike manner. She picked herself up and declutched the first machine. “Tounse! Forget your damn machines. We’ve got to find that animal.” Soon Tounse and his whole work gang were searching the print rooms for Ancho. Hedrigs wondered briefly if the dorfox could be deceiving them all with an I’m-not-here signal. Ancho hadn’t pulled a trick like that in five years. If he had not been killed in the mangle, he was probably scared witless. His panic combined with his general fear of the sea, had probably driven him outside and to some higher deck.

Svir left the others and ran outside. He glanced quickly about and ran up to the next level. Soon he had reached the mast deck. He stopped, gasping for breath. The wind was much stronger here. From the sails and rigging above him came a continuous, singing hum. He was alone except for a single sailor in a short semi-skirt She was climbing a rope ladder that stretched down from the mainmast. Svir wondered what she was doing—the rigging was adjustable from down in the navigation section. Besides, it was too windy to climb safely. Then he looked up past the girl. Almost forty feet above her, he saw Ancho’s furry form. Hedrigs ran across the deck, toward the mainmast. The dorfox moved awkwardly up the rope. Dorfoxes are, at best, only fair climbers. He was trying to retreat from all the things that frightened him, and going up was the only direction left. Svir debated whether he should follow the sailor, then saw that it would just upset her precarious balance. The wind blew the ladder into a clean catenary form. As the sailor rose higher, she was forced to climb with her back to the ground and the rope above her. Ancho was radiating helpless distress—even down on the deck it made Hedrigs faint with fear. Its effect on the sailor must have been nearly intolerable. For a heart-stopping instant it looked as if she were going to fall. Her feet slipped from the rope and she hung by her hands from the ladder. Then she hooked her leg around the ladder and inched forward. She was no longer climbing. One hundred fifty feet above the deck, the ladder was blown nearly horizontal.

Finally she reached Ancho. She seemed to coax him. The dorfox clutched at her neck, or the top of her shirt. The two came slowly down the long, curving ladder.

The girl collapsed at the base of the mast. Ancho released his tight hold on her and scuttled over to Svir. Hedrigs held the whimpering animal and helped the sailor to her feet. She was a bit taller than average, with black hair cut in short bangs. At the moment her face was very pale. “That was a brave thing you did,” said Svir. Without doubt, she had saved the animal’s life. “You really know how to handle those ropes.”

The girl laughed weakly. “Not me. I’m an apprentice proofreader.” She spoke in brief, anguished spurts. Her mind knew she was safe now, but her body did not. “That’s the first time I ever climbed them. Oh God! Every time I looked down, I wanted to throw up. Everything looked so far away and hard.”

She sat back down on the deck. She was shaking as much as Ancho. Svir put his hand on her shoulder.

“I like to come up here on my lunch time,” she said. “Your pet came running across the deck like his tail was on fire. He just grabbed that ladder and started up. I could tell he didn’t like climbing, but he was terrified of whatever was chasing him. Every few rungs, he’d stop and try to come down. I—I just had to do something.”

As she spoke these words, Grimm arrived on the mast deck. Tatja ran over and inspected Ancho with a careful, expert eye.

She didn’t say anything for several seconds, though she favored the girl with a long, calculating glance. Could Tatja be jealous? thought Svir, surprised. The girl scrambled to her feet and bowed slightly to the Science Editor. Finally Tatja turned to Hedrigs and smiled. “Svir Hedrigs, be introduced to Apprentice Proofreader Coronadas Ascuasenya. Coronadas Ascuasenya, Parallax Astronomer Svir Hedrigs.”

“Pleased.” The girl bowed again and smiled hesitantly.

“Tatja, Coronadas climbed almost to the top of the mast to save Ancho.”

“Yes, we saw from down below. That was a brave rescue.” She petted Ancho. “I just hope we haven’t wrecked the dorfox. We were fools to take him along this morning.” She looked up at the sun, which was just past the zenith. “We might as well get some dinner. It’s too late to start any training. We can begin this evening.” She picked up Ancho and they all descended to the lower decks.

The sun was three hours down before they began. The night was clear and Seraph’s light brought a bluish sheen to the sea. Tatja had used paperboard partitions to simulate a hallway within Benesh’s Keep. She had constructed the mockup on a portion of the deck out of the wind and hidden from the view of other ships.

“I’ll admit it’s pretty crude, Svir, but for the first trials we don’t need anything elaborate. The dimensions are the same as inside the. castle. You can see there are a couple of side passages opening off the main one.” Hedrigs moved to the entrance of the maze. It certainly wasn’t very convincing. The ceiling of the passage was purple sky. Posted at regular intervals down the forty-foot passage were company sailors simulating Royal Guardsmen. They didn’t seem too certain just what was expected of them.

Tatja petted Ancho gently. “We want Ancho to hallucinate these ‘Guardsmen.’ It’s going to take some training, but I want Ancho to convince whoever he points those pretty ears at, that you and he constitute an authority figure.”

Svir was surprised. “Is that possible? Ancho isn’t very smart, you know. It seems to me that in order to generate a detailed illusion, Ancho would have to be humanly intelligent.”

Tatja shook her head and grinned. “Nope. The intelligence of the victim provides all the background detail. I’ve spent several months on Dorfox Island, and I know things like that are possible. C’mon, let’s start, or we’ll still be at it when we pull into Bay fast.”

Ancho was sometimes sleepy during night wake periods, but he perked up noticeably when Tatja had a large bowl of rehydrated klig leaves brought on deck. He strained against Hedrigs’ hands, but the astronomer wouldn’t let him at the leaves. The dorfox was going to have to earn his treats. Svir’s father had often played games like this with Ancho, and had managed to teach the animal a number of tricks.

Svir stood up and put the dorfox on his shoulder. The “guardsmen” had assumed their posts in the passageway. The only woman among them was Cor Ascuasenya, who stood at the far end of the mockup. Tatja stood behind Hedrigs. In this position, she could watch what happened with relative immunity, since Ancho was not likely to turn around and broadcast in her direction.

“All right, Svir, give it a walk-through. We’ll see if Ancho will give us a demonstration,” said Tatja.

Hedrigs walked slowly through the mockup. Everything seemed quite normal But then, Ancho rarely aimed his hallucinations at his master.

When he was through, Tatja asked the first sailor what he had seen.

The fellow looked at her a little blankly. “What do you mean? When are you going to start the test?” The others were similarly confused. None of them had been conscious of Svir or Ancho as they walked down the hall. Tatja unfastened the lid on the klig bowl.

“That was a good performance,” she said. “Ancho managed to scan every person as you walked past. Now we have to make him try his other effects, till he produces exactly what we’re looking for.” She fed Ancho two leaves. The little mammal sucked on them greedily, momentarily enraptured. When he was done he reached out for more, but Tatja had already relocked the basket. He had done well, but a larger award must await an even better performance.

Svir petted the dorfox. Ancho appeared to enjoy the game. “You know, Tatja, Ancho is really dependable with that I’m-not-here signal. And he can scan a lot of people at once. Why don’t you settle for that, without trying for something more sophisticated?”

“It’s not enough, Svir. You’re going to have to go all the way to the center of the Keep—to the vault where the most precious sacrifices are kept. With Ancho’s I’m-not-here, you probably could steal the Guards’ keys. But what if some of the doors have combination locks? You need more than the Guards’ passive acceptance. They must actively help you. And there are more than ten thousand volumes in the Fantasie collection. That comes to at least two tons. You’re going to need help getting them out.” She picked up her noteboard and pen. “Let’s try it again.”

And again. And again.

Ancho soon learned that anything he tried would earn him some reward, but that if he repeated a previous performance, the prize was smaller. So he tried to come up with a new effect on each try. They soon exhausted the natural dorfox responses—the instinctive responses which served so well on the dorfox’s native island. Some of these could drive predators away, or dull their senses. Others attracted insects and lulled their suspicions.

Ancho also tried the tricks he had been taught since arriving in civilization. On one pass, all the crewmen in the passage broke into fits of hysterical laughter. Ascuasenya had the giggles fifteen minutes after Ancho came by. What they saw was hilariously funny, though they couldn’t explain to Tatja and Svir just why.

And though Tatja did her best to pace the work, the project became a grind. The sailors were especially tired. Ancho had put them through an emotional wringer. In one twenty-minute period, he made them laugh and cry. The dorfox had responded eagerly to all the attention showered upon him, but now was beginning to lose interest.

For the hundredth time, Svir started down the mock passageway. He was surprised at the degree of respect and obedience these sailors showed Tatja. She must have more authority on the Barge than her title indicated. When she made a suggestion in her low pleasant voice, people jumped. It was evidence how the best people rose to the top in any organization. What had he done to deserve her?

But it was beginning to look as though she was wrong about Ancho. Apparently this was one trick the dorfox couldn’t do. Maybe it was just as well. Hedrigs wasn’t really eager to stick his nose into the business of Tar Benesh.

“Damn it, man, stand up straight when you walk!” It took Svir an astonished second to realize that Tatja was speaking to him. “Come back and start over. How can you expect the dorfox to cast an illusion of authority if you drag about like an addled triform student?”

Hedrigs bit back a sharp reply. He walked to the beginning and started over. He almost swaggered down the passageway, imitating the gait of a Crownesse Bureaucrat he had once seen at a university dinner in Krirsarque. The effect was subtle. Suddenly Svir was no longer pretending. He actually felt important and powerful—the way he had always imagined politicians and generals feel. It seemed only natural that the sailors should snap to attention as he passed them. He returned their brace with an informal salute. The feeling of power disappeared when he came to the end of the passage.

Tatja smiled. “Wow! All right, Miss Ascuasenya, just what did you see when Svir walked by you?”

Cor looked confused. She glanced from Tatja to Svir and back again. “When I first looked at him coming down the hall, I could have sworn it was my father—but my family is in the Llerenito Archipelagate! As he got closer I saw that it was Jespen Tarulle. I mean, I knew it was Svir—it had to be. But it was Jespen Tarulle at the same time. Even now when I look at him, I see Tarulle —and yet I can see Svir, too.” Hedrigs glanced at Ancho’s ears. They weren’t pointing at Cor. The hallucination persisted even after the dorfox stopped radiating.

Tatja didn’t say anything for a second. She made a couple of notes in her book and looked up. “Can you see Ancho sitting on Hedrigs’ shoulder?”

Ascuasenya squinted. “No. All I see is that queer double image I just described.”

The others had similar reactions. About half saw Hedrigs as Tatja. These people were especially confused, since they now saw two Tatja Grimms. Every one of them realized that Ancho’s trickery was involved, and all but two could see Hedrigs behind the hallucination.

Svir’s shoulders sagged. All that work, and the best they could come up with was a halfbaked illusion that wasn’t even uniform. It would never fool the Royal Guards.

But Tatja seemed to feel otherwise. She finished writing in the notebook, and looked up, smiling. “Well, we’ve done it. The illusion is one of the strongest I’ve ever seen.

It persists even in the face of contradiction-to-fact situations. See, Svir, all you have to do is act confident. Ancho knows you and will radiate the same thing. I really didn’t mean to jump on you.”

Hedrigs nodded, still blushing from the unexpected attack. Her technique worked, but it was shocking.

Grimm continued, “We’d better knock off now. Ancho’s beginning to lose interest. By now he’s crammed full of klig leaves. And most of you look pretty dragged out. Let’s have another session after lunch.”

During the rest of the voyage to Bayfast they had four hours of practice in every wake period. In the end, Ancho was able to broadcast the authority signal even better than he could the I’m-not-here. He also grew fat on the klig leaves, assuming an almost spherical configuration. Tatja had him perform his new trick under every conceivable condition—even in the dark, down in one of the holds. They found that if a single authority figure were suggested to all the victims, then they all saw that same person. It took Ancho only a fraction of a second to set up the illusion in the human mind, and it persisted without booster treatment for almost ten minutes. Ancho could detect people hiding behind bulkheads, and could even project the authority illusion through several feet of stone. Tatja tried several times to make the dorfox generate the illusion for her, but Ancho just purred when she held him.

One experiment was a mystery to Svir. Tatja produced a flat balsir box and strapped it to the dorfox’s back. Ancho didn’t seem to mind. The box was light and apparently the straps didn’t chafe. The contraption looked vaguely like an oversize cookie cutter—its profile was an irregular set of semi-circles and lines. From either side of the box projected stubby cylinders of glass and wood. On top was a little hole—like the keyhole in a spring-powered clock. And the device clicked almost like a clock when it was mounted on Ancho’s back.

Tatja refused to reveal the exact purpose of the contraption. She said it was a last precaution, one whose usefulness would be impaired if Hedrigs knew its purpose. Hedrigs couldn’t imagine what sort of precaution would have such properties, but he accepted her explanation. Perhaps it was empty—a placebo to give him the false confidence necessary to trigger Ancho’s authority signal. But whatever it was, it was for the best—Tatja wanted it.

The Drag kept Grimm busy—even busier than the general run of the crew. Besides their practice sessions, he was with her only two or three hours out of every wake period. He saw almost as much of the proofreader, Coronadas Ascuasenya. It was surprising how often he found her eating at the same time and in the same meal hall as he. Hedrigs came to enjoy those meals more and more. Cor was no competition for Tatja, but she was pretty and intelligent and nice to be with.

Hedrigs spent the rest of his free time in the Barge library, where Tatja’s influence had opened some otherwise locked doors. Only fifteen or twenty people out of the thousand on board were allowed access to the library, but once inside there was no restriction on the use of materials. Here Tarulle kept specimen copies of all available issues of magazines published by the company. That amounted to about one hundred thousand volumes. Jespen Tarulle was in the printing business to make money, but he had a sense of history too, and the Barge library was the most luxurious part of the craft that Svir had yet seen. Here was none of the cramped stuffiness of the lower decks. Virtually none of the sea or ship noises were audible through the thick glass windows. Deep carpets covered the floor. During the night wake periods, well-tended algae pots supplemented Seraph’s light.

To a confirmed Fantasie addict, it was heaven. The Tarulle collection was nearly three-quarters complete— more than seven thousand issues. That was better than any of the libraries Svir had seen on the Islands. They even had several copies of the First Issue, printed just forty years after the invention of moveable type. In those years the magazine was sold in two yard-square sheets, folded into quarters. Only rarely was a story illustrated and then it was with crude woodcuts. But that was part of the enchantment. On that single barque—the predecessor of the Barge—they had printed such stories as Delennor’s Doom, and Search for the Last Kingdom—novels that after seven hundred years were still studied by poets and read with enjoyment by near-illiterates. The genius which showed through those smudged pages transcended the vehicle that had brought it across time to the present.

That original barque had been owned by an ambitious trading family, distantly related to the present publisher, Tarulle. At first, they confined their trade to the major islands of the Osterlei group—and at the same time provided regular and vital communication between those islands. As the business became more profitable, the family gave up their other trading operations, and visited islands further and further asea. The islands beyond the horizon provided even more enchanting themes and original authors. Fantasie readers were the first (and for a long time the only) cosmopolitans on the planet.

The magazine’s success was not without social repercussions. The effects of the first interplanetary fantasy were shattering both for the magazine and for the rulers of the Llerenito Archipelagate. Migration, by Ti Liso, forecast the rise of contrivance fiction. Liso’s hero discovered a species of flying fish which, during the winter season in the northern hemisphere, migrated to the southern hemisphere of Seraph. The hero captured several of the vicious creatures and taught them to pull his sailing boat. After a two-week flight, the fish deposited him half-starved on the south polar continent of Seraph. The story went on to describe the civilization he found there. It was an unfortunate coincidence that his Seraphian government was an absurd dictatorship founded on Tu-worship —for the tyrannical government of the Llerenitos was just such a farce in reverse. In plain fact the story had not been intended as satire. It had been written as straight adventure—Liso was a native of the Osterleis and he had honestly conceived the most ridiculous autarchy imaginable. The Seraphiles of the Llerenitos did not take it as a joke, and for the next fifty years, until the fall of their religion, Llerenito waters were forbidden to the barque. This was an especial hardship, since the technique for sailing to windward was not fully developed at that time. Avoiding the Llerenitos cost many months’ sailing time.

Each day brought Hedrigs closer to the coast of The Continent, closer to Bayfast. Back in Krirsarque, the prospect of invading the Crownesse Keep had seemed a faraway adventure. But Svir was coming to realize that it was a reality which he personally would have to face. He spent more and more of his time in the library, taking refuge in Fantasie. Sometimes he could avoid thinking of his own problems for hours at a time. He enjoyed the recent stories most. Especially contrivance fiction. The straight fantasy themes had been handled in every conceivable way in the past seven hundred years. It was only in the last two hundred that the idea of physical progress had emerged—the idea that there could be mechanical means of achieving fantastic ends. In the last fifteen years nearly half of Fantasies output had been c.f.

Hedrigs read straight through Tsumish Kats’ new serial. Kats was a biologist in the Tsanart Archipelagate. His science was usually strong and this novel was no exception. Like many authors, he postulated the discovery of large metallic deposits on The Continent. Such deposits made possible the construction of huge metal machines —machines powered by the same (as yet unexplained) mechanism which made the sun shine. As far as Svir could tell, this story contained a genuinely original idea —one that Hedrigs wished he had thought of first. Instead of going directly to Seraph in his metal “ships of space,” Kats set up way-stations, tiny artificial moons.

The ultimate landing on Seraph produced deadly peril. Kats populated the other planet with a race of intelligent germs. Hedrigs choked—this fellow was supposed to be a biologist? But on the next few pages the author actually justified the alien existence in a manner quite as logical and novel as his space-island idea. Hedrigs found himself following the story more and more avidly as the human race fought to protect itself from the menace brought back aboard the landing ship. The struggle against the microscopic invaders was one of the most suspenseful he had ever read. Things looked hopeless for humankind. Hedrigs turned the page.

The dirty bastard! Hedrigs’ comfortable shell of illusion burst. Kats had actually let the human race fall before the invaders! Hedrigs suppressed a desire to rip the magazine up into small pieces. The shock was like finding a snake in a schnafel pastry. Wasn’t there enough hell in the real world? He had seen far too many stories of this type lately. Feeling quite betrayed to reality by Kats, the young astronomer stood up and stomped out of the library.

Hedrigs halted on the terrace-deck near his cabin. It was past midday. Far above him, the wind whistled through the empty rigging and mastwork. Just two miles away, the brown and gray cliffs of Sornnai rose abruptly from the ocean, hiding Bayfast from view. Where the surf smashed into the base of Somnai the concentrated coastal plankton formed a glistening green band. In this longitude, Seraph hung almost thirty degrees above the horizon, its bluish-green crescent wraithlike against the bright blue sky.

The scene didn’t appeal. Svir cupped his chin in palm and morosely inspected the pitted guard-railing he leaned against. For all practical purposes they had reached Bayfast. Right now Kederichi Maccioso was treating with the Port Commander for landing clearance. Apparently there was some problem about getting pier space at this time, but this would be cleared up, and this afternoon they would be sailing right past the Regent’s Keep into the Hidden Harbor. And tonight he, Svir Hedrigs, would be risking his life to save the Fantasie collection. Could he go through with it?

He didn’t notice her until she was at the railing beside him.

“Hi, Cor.”

“Hi.” She smiled. They stood for a moment silently, watching the sparkling sea. Then she said hesitantly, “It’s tonight, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Svir … don’t go through with it.”

“Huh?” Hedrigs looked at her in some confusion. “Why not?”

“Those magazines aren’t worth dying for. And I think you would die. Crownesse is the most powerful country in the world. When we move into the port, we’ll pass Hangman’s Row. They play awfully rough here.”

She was voicing the fears that had transformed these last few days into hell. Now if only she could convince him that it was honorable to back out. “I agreed to do it, Cor. And I owe it to Tatja.”

Ascuasenya mumbled something.

“What’s that?”

She took a deep breath and started over. “That second is no reason at all. Tatja Grimm is … not a very nice person. She came aboard Tarulle only five years ago, as the Barge was passing through the Eastern Crownesse ports. She was an apprentice proofreader like me. Now she is probably the most powerful person in the entire Tarulle Company—Jespen Tarulle included. She has some sort of leverage with every important person on the Barge. Some guys love her, I think. With others it’s blackmail. Many people are just afraid of her. And no one knows what she’s really after.”

Hedrigs scowled. “You can’t expect me to believe that. I’ve watched the crew working with her. She gets more wholehearted cooperation and respect from them than most officers.” Svir felt the same hostility toward Ascuasenya that he would feel toward an outsider who slandered a member of his personal family.

Cor looked tired. “That just proves she’s a brilliant leader. I don’t deny that. And she’s at least as talented when it comes to mechanical matters, smarter than anyone I’ve ever seen. She designed the power trains they use in printing. She also developed some of the special sailing rigs we have on our hydrofoils.”

Hedrigs grunted, remembering a certain conversation several days earlier. But this thought was not reflected in the manner of his next question. “Just what brings you to spread this outrageous libel?”

Ascuasenya paled slightly. “I … I don’t want you hurt, Svir. And I know that if it would further her ends, she’d put your life in jeopardy. Besides, I … want you myself.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper.

Hedrigs felt himself soften. The things Cor had said became more understandable and more excusable. “I’m sorry, Cor. I didn’t know you felt that way. But you’re wrong. Tatja is wonderful. And I love her.”

“No!” The response was violent. “Just let me show you. Can Ancho still broadcast that I’m-not-here signal?”

“Yeah.” Hedrigs petted the animal sitting on his shoulder. Ancho had seemed almost to enjoy the voyage during the last couple of days. “If he knows that something is expected of him and yet I don’t pull that confidence act, he’ll generally broadcast the I’m-not-here.”

“Fine. Let’s use him to do a little eavesdropping. I’ll give you odds of five-to-one Grimm will be doing something you’d find out of character.”

Svir was shocked by the vehemence of her assertion. Spying on others was an activity he had never condoned. He temporized. “It’s kind of late, you know. She’s probably asleep.”

“Sleep? Sometimes I wonder if she ever does that.” She caught his arm. “C’mon.”

With an ugly sense of betrayal, Hedrigs followed the apprentice proofreader. Cor led him fifty yards aft and down a couple of flights. They were well into the day sleep period, and hardly anyone was about. The mast watch could detect any hostiles approaching the vessel, but they were not well-placed for observing the deck itself.

Finally Hedrigs and Ascuasenya stood below the balcony of Grimm’s office. Hedrigs cuddled Ancho. “Stay close to me up there, Cor, and you’ll be inside the illusion, too.” He boosted her up to the balcony, then hauled himself up. They had overextended themselves: it was just conceivable that people outside the illusion might be aware of them. But he was committed now.

They crawled to the office window and peeked over the sill. Svir was unprepared for the luxury of that room. It was almost as large as the library. The floor was carpeted with Lockspur jaguar pelts and the furniture inlaid with designs of worked silver—or that rarest of metals, aluminum.

Tatja sat at her desk, her face in profile. She was slumped over, studying a large sheet of paper on her desk. Svir had never seen her look quite so unhappy. Her eyes were wide and staring, and a tear glistened on her cheek. Hedrigs leaned closer against the window. What was she reading that could be so depressing? The paper on her desk was a detailed engineering diagram of— what? Then he recognized it as one of the Osterlei plans for a steam-driven turbine. The engine was ingenious and quite workable—but several thousand ounces of iron were necessary for its construction. Attempts to make boilers of nonmetallic materials had been comical, and occasionally disastrous, failures. How could an engineering diagram cause someone to cry?

Grimm looked up suddenly, not at the window, but at the door to her office. Apparently someone was asking admittance, though it was virtually impossible to hear anything through the thick glass. Tatja moved with amazing speed to cover the diagram and compose her features. In a matter of seconds, she appeared completely self-possessed.

The visitor was Brailly Tounse. Hedrigs pressed his ear against the glass, forgetting any scruples he had had about eavesdropping. What was said within was barely audible.

Tounse was saying, “Your people took fifteen ounces…steel. My steel! Why?”

“I needed it.” Her expression was almost haughty.

But Tounse was not put off. “So? I … too. We can’t run the presses without some metals, you …”

“Tough. We’re … lee of the Somnai now, so it doesn’t matter … return it after we leave Bayfast … need it to rescue … Fantasie collection.”

This last promise seemed to mollify Tounse somewhat, but he still asked, “… really think … will go through with it?”

Tatja laughed. “I can persuade that fatuous idiot to … anything—you should know that.” Tounse’s face went red.

Hedrigs drew back from the window, shocked. Were they talking about him? He looked at Cor and she returned his gaze levelly.

“Let’s go,” Svir muttered. He moved to the edge of the balcony and jumped to the deck below—almost on top of a crewman wearing editorial insignia. The fellow stared at him for a long moment and then continued his walk—apparently Ancho had stopped broadcasting. What if Tatja heard about this? The idea was chilling.

This line of thought was cut short as Cor came over the railing. They walked back toward the crew quarters. He stopped a few feet from the entrance to his own cabin.

Cor looked at him. “Well?”

“I don’t know, Cor. Perhaps if I knew more, what we saw wouldn’t be incriminating. I’m all confused.”

“When do you have to make up your mind?”

“Sometime this evening. I’m going to have a final briefing before lunch in the night wake period. I don’t know how long after that I’d be leaving.”

“Don’t go—at least think about what I said and what we saw.” She looked at him. “Please.”

Svir laughed harshly, “Girl, that’s one thing you can be absolutely sure of!”

Ascuasenya touched his hand briefly, then turned and walked away.

Svir didn’t get much sleep that afternoon. He lay on his bunk in the shuttered cabin, and stared into the darkness. What was Tatja Grimm? To him she had been a miraculous discovery, an escape from loneliness. And until now he had never doubted her sincerity. To the crew she was an immensely popular leader, one who could solve any problem. To the top officers on the Barge she was a harsh and arbitrary tyrant, a seductive genius, a bitch-goddess. Where did that leave the Tatja Grimm who sat silently, crying over an engineer’s diagram?

In any case, Tatja was not what he had imagined. And that revelation put the present situation in a new light.

Though it was past sunset, he didn’t go down for breakfast, but paced tensely back and forth in the little cabin. On the bed Ancho chirped and croaked miserably.

Svir had agreed to do a job. Only now did he realize just how much he had been influenced by Tatja. He saw that the rescue of the Fantasie collection was an extremely important project—but without the spell Tatja’s personality had cast upon him, he felt no interest in committing his own skin to the undertaking. Art was art, but life was sacred—especially his life. If he went through with the plan, Svir Hedrigs would probably die tonight. And that death would not be the adventurous, romantic death of a hero, but a sick, empty, final thing. Just thinking about it gave him the chills. How close he had come to sacrificing himself for—nothing. If it hadn’t been for Cor he would have, too. Ascuasenya was as true as Grimm was false. He had found out just in time.

He would turn Tatja down—the most she could get him for was his passage. Grimm would have to find another sucker and another dorfox. Hedrigs would see the Doomsday astronomer and get that situation cleared up. And perhaps—no, certainly—he would see Cor again, and ask her to leave Tarulle and come back to the Chainpearls with him.

Svir fed the dorfox a luscious meal, then went down to the main chow hall. He didn’t see Cor. That was unusual, but not surprising. They were still working extra shifts, processing material. He would see her later in the evening, after he confronted Tatja. Svir whistled as he bounded up the steps, thinking of the look on Grimm’s face when he told her he wasn’t going to help her.

The Barge was entering Bayfast Harbor now. That entrance was a narrow gorge cutting through the Somnai cliffs. Seraph was nearly full and its brilliant blue light transformed the normally brown cliffs into shimmery curtains of stone. Svir had to crane his neck to see the top, where the Bayfast naval guns were mounted, pointing down at him. The Tarulle Barge was almost half as wide as the entrance.

Hedrigs’ stride broke as he noticed a small lighter pulling away from the Barge. That girl, with the helmet of short black hair—she looked like Coronadas Ascuasenya: Svir rushed to the terrace rail. She was more than fifty yards away and not facing him—but he was almost sure it was Cor. On her lap she carried a small suitcase. What was going on? He ran along the rail, shouting her name. But the wind, channeled by the gorge, was loud, and she was already far away. The boat rounded the curve of the gorge, disappeared.

Perhaps it wasn’t Cor after all; but the old Fantasie motto came to mind—”Things are not as they seem.”

His mood was considerably subdued by the time he reached the executive decks. He confronted one of Tatja’s secretaries and was ushered into the Science Editor’s office.

Grimm smiled faintly as Svir advanced to her desk. “Have a seat, Svir. Ready to begin the briefing?”

Hedrigs didn’t accept the proffered chair. He stood awkwardly before the desk. Tatja’s physical presence almost made him disregard what he had seen that afternoon, and suddenly it was difficult to say the speech he had been planning. “Tatja—Miss Grimm, I’ve been thinking, uh, about this … project. I know it’s important to you—to everyone here. But I, uh, I don’t think that I’m the right, uh …”

Tatja picked a crystal letter-cutter from her desk. She Hashed him a broad smile. “To make a long story short, you’ve decided you would rather not go through with it. You’re willing to pay for your passage, but you feel no obligation to risk your neck on this scheme. Is that what you are trying to say?”

“Why, yes,” Svir said, relieved. “I’m glad you see my point of view.”

Tatja didn’t say anything. She inspected the letter-cutter, tossed it into the air in a glittering whirl, and caught it just before it would have slammed into the hardwood desk. A strange gurgly sound came from her lips. Svir realized she was laughing.

“You know, Hedrigs, you are the most gullible person I ever met. Correction: the second most gullible. You’re a provincial, overgrown adolescent, and how you thought you could fool anyone into thinking you had ever been off the Islands is beyond me. I need that dorfox. Did you honestly believe that our encounter on Krirsarque was an accident? I’ve been studying those animals a long time. If I had you killed, I’m certain I could become Ancho’s new master. Only my high moral character prevents me from taking that course.”

She smiled again. It was almost a sneer, revealing a hostility that seemed to transcend the subject at hand. “If I had known Ascuasenya could be such a nuisance, I would have kept her out of your way. Yes, I heard about your activities this afternoon. No matter. For my plans to succeed I now need some new form of leverage. Poor little Ascuasenya is perfect for my purposes.”

Grimm sat back and relaxed. “I said you were the second most gullible person in my experience. Coronadas Ascuasenya is the first. She believed me when I told her that you had already left the Barge for Bayfast. She believed me when I told her that our spies had discovered new information which you had to have to avoid disaster. She believed me when I said that with the proper credentials she could get into the Keep and warn you. And she will get rather far into the castle—those credentials are very good counterfeits. When she is finally discovered, the Regent’s men will believe they have foiled a serious espionage attempt.”

Hedrigs stepped back from the desk, as shocked by her hostility as by what she was saying. For an instant she didn’t seem human. Everything Cor had said was true. Grimm was a creature sitting at the center of an infinite complex of scheme and counter-scheme, plot and counter-plot—her ultimate goal beyond human understanding. Every detail of the last ten days had pushed him according to her whim. Even as she spoke now, she was trying to maneuver him into some new trap.

“Do you know what Tar Benesh does with spies, Svir Hedrigs?”

The astronomer shook his head dumbly. Grimm told him.

“And when they get done, the spy is generally burned alive,” she added. “So, Svir my love, run back to your cabin, get Ancho, and come back here. The briefing’s going to take a while, and I want you off the Barge well before midnight.”

Hedrigs had never before wanted to kill anybody. He wanted to now—very much. This creature had imperiled the two lives he valued most. Svir told her so in words he had never used with a woman.

Tatja just laughed. “You may be a good astronomer, dear, but you’re weak on biology. Do as I say. And don’t get any ideas of taking off on your own to save Cor. You will find when I brief you that the only way you can help her is to save the Fantasie collection in the process.”

Six hours later, Svir Hedrigs emerged from the offices of the Tarulle executive deck, and descended to the debarkation levels. He wore an old, baggy suit and carried a light balsir cage disguised as a suitcase. Ancho sat comfortably within the cage. He wore the mysterious clicker on his back.

The Barge had reached its pier space and was already so firmly tied in that it was difficult to tell where Barge ended and pier began. Gibbous Seraph cast a bright, cheerful twilight across Bayfast. The clashing, bright colors of the city were transformed into pastels. Here and there those pastels were highlighted by yellow and green sparkles where people uncovered their evening lamps. This shimmery, glowing pattern stretched up toward the edge of the seaward cliffs and around the bay to the inland cliffs, which cut off the Monsoonal Drag and made Bayfast one of the few placid spots on The Continent at this time of year.

Svir left the Barge and walked along the waterfront. The Festival of the Ostentatious Consumption was not due to begin for another six hours, but the citizens of Bayfast were already competing with one another for the best sites along the waterfront from which they could watch the events on Sacrifice Island out in the bay. Hedrigs knew he looked strange walking so seriously among the happy people. His severe costume contrasted sharply with the plaids and monochromes of the Bayfastlings. But Svir had his special reason for not wearing the costume Tatja had suggested.

The people of Crownesse were happy, confident, and nationalistic. Originally they had been colonists from the Chainpearl and other Archipelagates. The hardships of The Continent had forced an, optimistic dynamism on them. In the thousand years since they declared their independence from the sea, it had often been remarked that they showed the most initiative and intelligence of any people on Tu. They had developed their bureaucratic system to heights existing nowhere else in the world. Their Bureaucracy was talented, flexible and, above all, devoted to the Crown. In the last two centuries the Reaches of Crownesse had grown threefold. The country already stretched most of the way across the southern coast of The Continent, and steady inroads were being made into the Interior. But the spiritual evolution of Crownesse had ended abruptly twenty years ago, when the strange and implacable Tar Benesh appeared in the King’s Court. The King had died and Tar Benesh had become the Regent. Shortly after, the King’s children had disappeared in a sea-wreck.

Since those days twenty years before, Tar Benesh’s rule had been a study in expanding tyranny. He had, with the faithful help of the Bureaucracy, transformed the open competitive spirit of the Bayfastlings into an aggressive barbarism which could worship the destruction involved in the Ostentatious Consumption, and which could desire world conquest.

Hedrigs was walking east, toward the Keep. That enormous semi-dodecahedron loomed black over the warehouse roofs. Even the ingenious Bayfastlings had needed seventy years to build this ultimate protection for the Crown. Nothing short of a year-long artillery bombardment could breach that artificial mountain—and the Keep had plenty of its own armament. Just ventilating the structure required the services of twenty draft animals.

Svir stopped before he reached the two-hundred-foot open space surrounding the Keep. He slipped into the entranceway of, a closed shop and covertly inspected the castle port through which he must pass. Once more the horrible fear rose in him, making his every movement slow and clumsy. He knew he was going to die.

A figure dressed in the uniform of a Guard captain walked across the open area toward the port. That was the signal to begin. The “captain” was a Tarulle agent whose job it was to warn the Guardsmen at the door to look sharp, since the Crown’s Inspector General was expected momentarily. In truth, The Crown’s I.G. was supposed to visit the Keep at this time, but he was being detained by other Tarulle agents. In any case, the two Guardsmen at the door should now be prepared to assume that the next authority figure they saw was the Inspector General.

Hedrigs fumbled the suitcase open and lifted Ancho out. The animal responded nervously to the human’s obvious anxiety. Svir tried to reassure him. He depressed the tiny button on the side of the box strapped to the dorfox’s back. The contraption immediately began making a click-clock-click sound.

What if the device were a bomb hooked up to a clock, timed to blow up after they were within the Keep? He debated for a moment whether to rip the machine off Ancho’s back. But there was no explosive which could possibly be fitted into a package this small and still do any damage to the castle. Tatja had no motive for tagging him with a clock bomb. And since his survival was necessary for the recovery of the Fantasia collection, the device probably had some beneficial—though certainly mysterious—role.

He stood up, put the dorfox on his shoulder, and petted him. The animal began radiating immediately. His first target was a middle-aged merchant—one of the few people who were not yet at the waterfront. As the man passed Svir and Ancho, his eyes widened and he performed the nodding bow reserved for members of the Bureaucracy. Svir smiled and walked onto the open area before the Keep. In some peculiar way, when Ancho used the effect on others, it made Svir feel confident, competent. And this feeling of authority actually seemed to feed back to the animal, making him perform even more effectively. Hedrigs strolled briskly across the grassy plain.

The two Guardsmen came rigidly to attention as he approached. One of them saluted. Svir offhandedly returned the salute. He passed his credentials to the Guardsman. At the same time he spoke the ritual words. “The Crown’s agent to inventory the Prizes.”

The senior Guardsman looked up from the papers. “Very good, sir.” Both men wore ridiculously ornamented dress uniforms, but there was nothing ornamental about their weapons. In a single glance, the Guardsman gave Svir a thorough once-over. His alert and active mind checked for the minor details that would give an impostor away. Unfortunately for the Guardsman, his own mind made him see the details he was looking for. If questioned later, both Guards would swear they saw the Crown’s Inspector General entering the building, and not Svir Hedrigs.

The fellow returned Svir his papers, and turned to an inconspicuous speaking tube that emerged from the black stone of the castle wall. Except for the words “Inspector General,” Svir couldn’t hear what was said. But that was enough. He had passed the second hurdle. At each checkpoint, the word would be passed back as to who he was supposed to be. With a greased sliding sound, a thirty-ton cube of stone lifted into the ceiling of the entrance. Beyond was darkness.

Svir walked in, striving not to look up at the mass of stone above him, or back at the colorful city which would soon be blocked from his view. The stone cube slid smoothly down. Svir stood in the dark for almost five seconds. Ancho chirped nervously, and the device on his back continued to clock-click-clock. Hedrigs rubbed the little animal’s neck, and the dorfox began radiating again, none too soon. A second block of stone was lifting. Algae-generated light flooded the chamber. He stepped into the hallway and handed his papers to the Guardsmen standing there. Two of them were right by the entrance, while a third stood on a crenelated balcony near the ceiling. All three were dressed in loose, comfortable suits of Bureaucratic black. They weren’t nearly as formal as the fellows outside, but they showed obvious respect—and they were just as alert and competent as the dudes outside. Hedrigs’ identity was passed by speaking tube to the next checkpoint.

Svir walked on confidently. The hall was well lighted and ventilated, even though it was within a mass of stone almost six hundred feet high. In some places the cold black stone was covered by wood paneling and cabinets filled with the Arms of Early Kings. He passed through three more checkpoints, each with its own door system. Whenever he had a choice of routes he took the middle one—he was following a radius straight to the center of the Keep, to the Crown Room vault. Some of the outer passages were almost crowded. Bureaucrats were making final arrangements for the evening’s events. Svir walked aloof from these groups, and hoped that none of them compared notes on exactly who they thought he was. As he approached the center, however, there were fewer and fewer people. Besides the Guards, he encountered only an occasional, very high-ranking Bureaucrat.

Here the identification procedures became more complex. The walls were uniformly panelled and the floors heavily carpeted. Svir wondered at this strange luxuriousness in the most secret part of the Keep. Besides the usual paintings and displays, there were small glass windows at regular intervals. Beyond that glass, Svir could see only darkness. Probably there was someone back there watching what went on—guarding the guards. Svir was suddenly very glad that Tatja had had Ancho practice at deluding hidden observers. Now he knew the reason for the luxurious trappings. Besides hiding the observation posts, they probably concealed a variety of weapons and deadfalls.

Finally he reached the last checkpoint—the doorway to the Crown Room itself. It was conceivable that at this moment, only the Inspector General and Tar Benesh himself had authority to enter that storeroom of the nation’s greatest treasures and most secret documents. Here the clearance process was especially difficult. For a few uncomfortable moments, Svir thought they were going to take his fingerprints and run a comparison right there. Would the illusion extend to fingerprints? But apparently that procedure was used in special cases only, and Svir was not subjected to it.

As they opened the outer vault door, Hedrigs casually turned to the officer in charge. “Captain, I have instructions to move some of the Prizes out to Sacrifice Island right away. I’d like to have a couple of squads ready when I finish the general inventory.”

“Very good, sir,” she answered. “We have about twenty people with the proper clearance for just that job. I can have them here in fifteen minutes.” She handed Svir an algae lamp. “Don’t forget this, sir.”

“Why, thanks.” Hedrigs accepted the lamp uncertainly. “If everything’s in order, my inventory should take about forty minutes—if not, it could be longer.” A lot longer, thought Svir to himself.

Hedrigs turned and walked quickly into the lock area between the double doors. The outer door slid shut, the inner door lifted open, and he stepped into the Crown Room.

The vault was a disappointment. The room was large and without ornamentation. Svir’s lamp provided the only illumination. Over all hung a musty smell, which the tiny vault ventilator shafts could not dissipate. The treasures were not heaped in a spectacular pile, but were neatly catalogued on racks that filled most of the room. Each object had its own classification tag. A row of cabinets along one wall housed the personal records of the Royal Family. Svir walked along the racks. (He almost didn’t notice the Crown Jewels and the nine-hundred-thirty-carat Shamerest cut diamond. In the dim light everything looked dull.) Finally he reached the red-tag area—the prime sacrifices for the Festival.

And there it was—the Fantasie collection. Its sheer bulk was impressive. The ten thousand volumes were stacked on seven close-set racks. The entire mass rested on a dolly for easy handling. Obviously Benesh thought of Fantasie as an article of portable wealth rather than a source of philosophical and romantic pleasure. But—as Tatja so cynically pointed out—that massive collection was also the vehicle of Cor’s salvation. Even in this dim light, he could read some of the binding titles. Why, there was the last obra of Ti Liso’s Time Travel Series! For the last three centuries, the Chainpearl experts had been trying to find that issue. The series had been illustrated by Inmar Ellis—probably the greatest artist of all time. Svir noticed all this in passing. No matter how valuable this collection, its physical dimensions were much more important to him now. There was indeed enough room between the third and fourth racks to hide a human body.

Now he had to find the correct passage to the prison tier. If Tatja had lied about that—

The vault doors were so well constructed that Hedrigs did not know he had been discovered until the inner door lifted and he heard the raging voice of— Tar Benesh.

The Regent advanced into the room. A look of astounded shock came to his face as he saw Hedrigs. Svir wondered briefly what authority figure the dictator saw in Ancho’s illusion. Benesh was less than five feet tall. He weighed more than two hundred pounds. Once that weight had been slablike muscle, but now he was as soft as the velvet and flutter-feather costume he wore.

The Regent shakily raised his arm and pointed at Hedrigs. “Take that—man,” he choked. The black-uniformed Guardsmen swarmed toward Svir, their momentary confusion replaced by cool professionalism. Svir felt only confidence as they approached. He was in trouble, true, but he could work his way out of it.

The confidence vanished. As the Guardmen grabbed him, Svir collapsed into the quivering apathy of total fear. He felt a burning needle thrust into the base of his neck, and simultaneously his entire body became a single charlie-horse. He couldn’t move, he could hardly breathe, and what he saw and heard seemed to be far away, observed through a curtain of pain. He felt his person being searched, and dimly heard Benesh say, “A dorfox, that’s the creature you saw.”

“But, M’lord Regent, that’s a mythological creature.”

“Obviously not! Search the Crown Room.” An unprecedented order. “No one enters or leaves this vault till we find—” he paused, realizing that this was impractical. It would tie up the Guard situation in the whole Keep. “No, belay that. But I want that creature, and I want it alive.” There was a lustfulness in his voice. “Check everyone and everything that passes through these doors.”

Svir felt himself picked up, moved swiftly toward the door. And of all the humans in the room, he was the only one who noticed the dorfox seated on the shoulder of Tar Benesh.

As they rushed him through the Keep passageways, Svir vaguely wondered what had given him away— though he really didn’t care now. Nothing could save him and Cor. And soon this paralysis would be replaced by the ultimate agony of interrogation.

Finally his captors stopped. There was a dull creaking sound. Then he was sailing through the air. His hip struck the hard stone floor. His head and shoulders were resting in a pile of straw. He smelled rot and blood. The heavy door swung shut and he was in darkness.

There was a shuffling sound, and someone was holding him. Cor! She pressed her body tight against his and whispered in his ear what seemed a complete irrelevancy. “I’m so sorry, Svir! I tried to warn you but they got me.” She was silent for a second, waiting for some response. He longed to put his arms around her. “Svir?” she whispered. “Are you all right? Svir!” But Hedrigs was so thoroughly paralyzed, he couldn’t even croak.

“—realize we’re sitting beneath the Keep artillery. To get out, we’d have to go around the peninsula past the entrance guns. And now you want me to send twenty people on a diversionary raid! If Benesh ever connects us with this scheme, we’ll be blown out of the water—if we’re lucky!” Kederichi Maccioso slammed his broad fist down on Tatja’s desk, jarring her aluminum drinking carafe half an inch into the air.

“Relax, Ked, we aren’t suspected of anything yet. It’s still a state secret that the collection is one of the sacrifices. There’s—” She broke off and motioned Maccioso to be silent. Even over the thrumming crowd sounds outside, they could both hear a scratching against the office window.

Tatja Grimm pushed the window open and pulled a shivering, croaking Ancho into the room. She held him close and comforted him with low, gentle sounds. Maccioso sat down abruptly and stared at them, shocked.

“The—dorfox wouldn’t come back alone unless Hedrigs had been taken,” he stuttered.

Tatja smiled. “That’s right. Svir never had a chance— though he lasted longer than I thought he would.”

“But this means Benesh knows. We’ve got to get a—” Then he seemed to realize what Grimm had just said. “What did you say? You knew all along he would fail?” His voice rose to an astonishing volume, rattled the window. “We’re all going to die because of you, you—”

“Shut up, Ked,” Tatja said pleasantly. “You’re disturbing Ancho. Do you really think I would do anything to jeopardize my own life?” She set Ancho on her desk. “You know,” she said with apparent irrelevance, “I’ve studied dorfoxes. If they were just a little smarter or a little more mobile, they could take over the world. As it is though, I can manipulate them. With Hedrigs out of the way, I think Ancho will accept me as his new master.” She undid the clicker and set it carefully on her desk. “Hand me that bottle of lacquer, will you?” She accepted the bottle and screwed an atomizer onto its cap. Then she inserted the nozzle into the clicker’s keyhole and puffed the volatile lacquer into the box. In spite of himself, Kederichi Maccioso leaned over the table to watch this mysterious ritual. Ancho moved over to the corner of the table and munched the klig leaves that Tatja had thoughtfully provided.

“That should fix it.” She undid the hidden catches and lifted the top off the box. “You know that picture-maker we’ve been using in our latest issues? I’ve made some refinements on the invention.”

Maccioso looked at the machine’s innards. It resembled only vaguely the picture-maker Tarulle used. In that device, light was focused on a special cellulose plate coated with very fine algae powder. Wherever light fell on the plate, the cellulose became charged and repelled the greenish powder from its surface. If the plate were properly coated with lacquer, a permanent picture resulted.

Tatja pointed. “See, this clock movement pulls the reel of cellulose tape through the central area. Once every two seconds, this shutter takes an exposure. On alternate seconds, the shutter on the other side of the box takes a picture. So we now have a pictorial record covering nearly three hundred degrees. A picture every second, for nearly ten minutes.” She pulled the reel out of the clicker and began to examine it under a large magnifying glass. Maccioso had a clear, though distorted, view of the pictures through the same lens.

The first thirty pictures covered Hedrigs’ approach to the Keep. Every other picture was reversed since it had been made on the opposite side of the cellulose. In spite of this, and the fact that the pictures were considerably less clear than ones made with simpler, one-shot devices, the sequence gave Maccioso the unreal sensation that he was sitting on Hedrigs’ shoulder. On every second frame, Svir’s head blocked out part of the picture.

Tatja carefully inspected each picture, but it was obvious that she didn’t expect anything strange this early in the sequence. She became increasingly excited as the pictures showed the interior of the Keep. Here the exposure she had chosen was much more effective and the pictures sharper. “See, that paneling and those paintings—they weren’t in any of the reports. And here, I’ll bet this is what snagged dear Hedrigs.”

Maccioso squinted at the tiny picture. It looked no different from the three or four previous. Then Tatja pointed out the rectangular patch of darkness on the passage wall. “That’s not a painting. It’s some kind of window. My guess is that the Guards have heard of the poison gases developed in the Sutherseas. That little window is one end of a periscope, and the observer is in another room, protected from the gas—and apparently beyond Ancho’s range.” They looked at the rest of the pictures, but most were badly fogged. As the exposure had been made, more and more algae powder had been sent into a colloidal suspension in the clicker. An equilibrium state had been reached, where as much green was being deposited as was being dissipated by the exposures. Those last pictures showed vague green blurs. They saw something of the interior of the Crown Room. And in one of the pictures. Tatja claimed she saw a group of men.

Grimm set the film aside and picked up a pair of dividers. “We discovered that Ancho can broadcast through almost twenty feet of porphyry.” She made some rapid measurements of relative sizes on the film. “That periscope window is about three inches by three.” She sat back and her eyes unfocused for a moment. “Now assuming their optics are no better than elsewhere, that periscope can’t have a resolution higher than half an inch.” She looked up and flashed Maccioso a dazzling smile. “I’m all set! Svir has served his purpose.”

Tatja got up and began to take her clothes off. Maccioso stood up too. He was a big man, an experienced man, a leader. But he appeared to be none of these now. His face bore a peculiar mixture of hatred, surprise, and confusion. As Grimm laid her shirt on the chair, he reached out a huge hand, grabbed her by the shoulder, drew her face close to his.

“You never intended this plan to save Fantasie, did you?”

Tatja shrugged. “You know the saying, Ked, ‘Things are not as they seem.’ “

“What are you after then, damn you?” He shook her violently, but received no answer. “Well, if you think I’m going to risk any more Tarulle people for your pleasure, you’re crazy.”

“Poor Ked,” Tatja said gently. Her hand moved softly up his arm, found a nerve in his elbow. As he jerked back, she slipped away. “I see that I’ve almost driven you beyond logic and self-interest. Almost.” She reached into an alcove and drew out a suit of black armor. The Crown’s Inspector General was about her height, but the armor had been designed for a male. In places it chafed, but she managed to get it on.

She slipped the épée into its sheath and picked Ancho up from the desk. At the door she turned back to face Maccioso. “But I know you will go through with that attack. You know that whatever my plan is, it’s the only chance you have of getting out of this alive, now that Benesh has Ascuasenya and Hedrigs. Right?”

Kederichi Maccioso glowered at her for a moment, then slowly nodded his head. “That’s right, you … bitch.”

Seraph was in its last quarter, and the evening wake period was ending. Nearly a million people—the entire population of the capital—were crowded along waters-edge. In the waning blue light, the crowd was a mosaic carpet covering the streets and stretching up over the roofs of the lower buildings. The Festival was at its noisiest as the Bayfastlings cheered the first sacrifices being towed into the bay. These were the secondary sacrifices —the appetizers. The tiny barges formed a continuous train out to Sacrifice Island. Each barge was stacked high with worked jade, optical devices, paintings. Hanging from the stern of each barge, an algae-water sphere lit the sacrifices.

A twisted smile crossed Tatja’s lips as she regarded the scene.

She descended to one of the sub-pier passageways reserved for official use, and five minutes later emerged on the city side of the crowd. Here were the stragglers, the individuals without initiative enough to push into the crowd. She petted Ancho, spoke quietly to him. This was a critical test. According to theory, Ancho should accept her as his new master, but Tatja had to be sure. She couldn’t tell whether he was radiating or not. Certainly the signal was having no effect on her. Then she noticed that people came to attention as she walked past. Good Ancho.

She reached the Keep without incident. The Guardsmen looked her over very carefully, this being the second Inspector General they had seen that day. But they let her through. As she stood in the darkness between the two doors, Grimm moved the dorfox to her waist. The armor plates gave him good purchase, and now he was below the view of the periscopes.

At last she came to the doors of the Crown Room. Tatja spoke in a low masculine voice, to fool any listening devices. Even with her visor up, she knew that wearing the I.G.’s armor would deceive the hidden observers. And of course the Guardsmen in the hall didn’t have a chance. With Ancho’s help, even her fingerprints passed inspection.

Once in the Crown Room she moved quickly to the royal records. She lifted out the drawer she wanted, thumbed through it, and pulled out a single sheet of vellum. Good. It was the same form as had been publicly displayed at the Assignation of the Regency. From her pouch she drew a seemingly identical paper, smudges and all, and slipped it into the file.

Then she left, ignoring the puzzled Guards. They had expected the I.G. to supervise the removal of the prizes.

Tatja found the stairway to the Conciliar Facet unguarded. This was unexpected good fortune. Perhaps Maccioso’s diversion had been more effective than she had hoped.

She removed the black resin armor and set the outfit on one of the display racks which lined the base of the stairwell. This was the most perilous part of her plan. If she were discovered in the next three or four minutes, there’d be real trouble. From a gray cloth pouch she drew a white dress and jeweled sandals. She slipped them on, put Ancho on her shoulder and ran up the stairs. This stairway wasn’t often used since it was a single spiral ascending six hundred feet. Most people preferred to go by stages. Even so, Tatja kept the heavy épée. Except for that, and the dorfox clutching her shoulder, she might have been an island girl at a communion picnic.

She took the steps three at a time, so fast that she had to lean toward the center of the spiral in order to keep her balance. When she had first conceived this scheme, she had spent three years in Bayfast studying the people and especially the Keep. Tar Benesh had created the Festival of the Ostentatious Consumption in order to draw attention from a much more solemn event that took place every five years at the same time. The top people in the Bureaucracy were scrupulously honest, but if she were even five minutes late, she would have to wait five years—or possibly forever. Taking the back way should save her from Benesh’s Special Men, but if she were wrong about the Bureaucratic esprit of the rest, then she would die—though death could make her failure no worse. If she couldn’t succeed, life wasn’t worth living.

Tatja took the six-hundred-foot stairway in a single sprint. At the top of that long flight was an entrance to the Conciliar Facet, the pentagonal amphitheater on the very top of the enormous dodecahedron that was the Keep. Beyond this next door was the final test. She slid the door open and crept out into the uppermost tier of the amphitheater. There was a faint cool breeze and Seraph-blue covered everything. From the city came crowd-sounds.

Less than a third of the seats in the Facet were filled and those were down in the center, by the podium and reading lamp. Virtually everyone present was dressed in Bureaucratic black. An important exception was the gross and colorful bulk of Tar Benesh, sitting in the first row before the podium.

Tatja glanced around the Facet. Maccioso’s diversion must have worked. Few of the Guards appeared to be Bencsh’s bully boys. There were only fifteen or twenty armed men present. Of course one of them might still be rotten, but that was a chance she must take. She noticed one man just five feet from her hiding place. The fellow leaned unprofessionally against the edge of the tier, blocking her entrance. She reversed the hilt of the épée and moved swiftly forward, ramming the pommel into the base of the man’s neck. He collapsed quietly into her arms. She dragged him back, at the same time watching for signs that someone below had noticed the incident.

The speaker’s voice came clearly to her. She knew there were about five minutes until the ceremony reached its critical point. She looked at her épée. It was no longer an asset. Without putting herself in silhouette, she reached up and slid the weapon over the parapet. There came a faint sound of scrape and clatter as the épée slid slowly down the side of the hundred-foot facet. Tatja sat Ancho on the edge of the tier and petted him. They waited.

In the center of the amphitheater, the ceremony was nearing its end. On the podium stood the Lord High Minister to the Crown—the highest Bureaucratic officer of Crownesse. The man was old, but his body was lean, and his voice was clear and strong as he read from the curling parchment. He had the air of a man who is for the thousandth time repeating a fervent and sincere prayer, a prayer that has so often been fruitless that it has almost become perfunctory.

“And so in the Year of the Discovery Nine Hundred and Seven did the Crown Prince Evard II and his sister, Princess Marget, take themselves aboard the Royal Yacht Avante to tour the western reaches of their Dominions.

“And on the fifth day of their voyage a great storm sent their yacht upon the Rocks of the South—for so we have the word of the ship’s captain and those crewmen who survived the tragedy.”

Tatja stood up slowly, out of their view. She fluffed out her full skirt and waited quietly for the moment that would come.

“The Royal Children were never found. So it is that the Regent continues to govern in their stead until such time as our rulers are recovered. On this twenty-fifth anniversary of that storm, and by order of the Regent, I ask that anyone with knowledge of the Royal Family step forth.” The Lord High Minister glanced about moodily. The ceremony was almost a legal fiction. It had been fifteen years since anyone had dared Tar Benesh’s revenge with a story of the lost children. It was not surprising that the Minister almost fell off the stand when a clear, vibrant voice answered his call.

“I, Marget of Sandros, do claim the Crown and my Dominions.” Tatja stood boldly on the uppermost tier, her arms akimbo. Behind her, and invisible to those below, sat a small animal with large ears. The startled Bureaucrats stared at Tatja. Then their eyes turned to the Regent. How would he accept this challenge? The gaily-dressed dictator advanced six ominous steps toward Tatja. His pale eyes reflected hatred and complete disbelief. For twenty years he had ruled the most powerful country on Tu—and now a female was challenging him at the very center of his power. Benesh gestured angrily to the Guardsmen—the sleek professionals with thousands of hours of target and tactical experience, the deadliest individuals in the world.

“Kill the imposter,” he ordered.

When they came, Svir was ready.

He and Cor had lain quietly in the darkness, telling each other their stories in frightened whispers. As Cor massaged the numbness from his arms, Svir told her of his one backstop against Grimm’s treachery. Tounse, who hated Tatja as much as Hedrigs did, had provided the astronomer with five pounds of Michelle-Rasche powder. Now that powder lay in the heavy fiber weave of his clothing.

“It’s perfectly safe until the cloth gets twisted into a constricted volume,” he whispered to Cor. “But then almost any extra friction will set it off.”

He struggled out of his overjacket. Cor helped him wedge the fabric into the door crack. Though only a small portion of the jacket could be jammed in, it would be enough to set off the rest of the powder. Then they retreated to the far corner of the cell. There was nothing more they could do. He hadn’t said so to Cor, but the best they could hope for was a quick death. If they weren’t killed in the explosion or by the Guards—then the next stop was the torture chambers. Their present cell was a carefully contrived filth-pit, designed to prepare prisoners psychologically for what was to come. Somehow the prospect of torture and death no longer provoked absolute terror in him. Cor was the reason. He wanted to hide his fear from her—and to protect her from her own fears.

He put his arm around Cor’s waist and drew her to him. “You came out here to save me, Cor.”

“You did the same for me, Svir.”

“I’d do it all over again, too.”

Her reply was clear and firm. “So would I.”

When they came, there was plenty of warning. It sounded like a whole squad. The heavy footsteps stopped, and when they began again, it sounded like only two or three men. Svir and Cor slid under the filthy straw. The footsteps stopped at the door. Svir heard the key turn, but he never heard the door open. For that matter, he never actually heard the explosion. He felt it through his whole body. The floor rose up and smashed him.

Hedrigs forced himself to his feet, and pulled Cor up. The doorway was a dim patch of light through the dust and vapor that the explosion had driven into the air. They gasped futilely and ran toward the opening. Svir was aware of blood flowing down his jaw from his ear.

The blast had destroyed the bottom hinges on the door and blown the whole mass into the ceiling. In the hallway lay the two Guardsmen. Both were alive, but in much worse shape than the prisoners. One, with a severe scalp cut, tried ineffectually to wipe the blood from his eyes. Svir and Cor stepped over them and ran down the hall. Then they saw the men at the end of the passage—the back-up section. The two prisoners came to a sudden halt and started to turn in the other direction.

A Guardsman smiled faintly and twisted a lever mounted in the wall. A weighted net fell from the ceiling onto the two escapees. As the Guard approached, Svir lashed out at his legs, hoping to provoke lethal retaliation. The Guard easily avoided the extended hand, and grabbed it with his own. “You know, fella, for someone whose life we’re supposed to protect, you’re making things damn difficult.”

Svir looked back blankly. He couldn’t make sense of the words spoken. The net was removed, and the Guards marched Svir and Cor down the hall. The proofreader and the astronomer looked at each other in complete confusion. They weren’t even treated to the paralysis the Guards had used before. It was a long uphill walk, and the Guards had to help Cor the last part. Svir wondered if he had gone crazy with fear and was seeing only what he hoped to see. They came to the final door. The Guard captain went through. They could hear him through the open doorway.

“Marget, the individuals you requested are here.”

“Fine,” came a familiar voice. “Send them out, I want to talk to them alone.”

“Begging your pardon, Marget, but they have repeatedly offered us violence. We could not guarantee the safety of your person if you interview them alone.”

“Mister, I told you what I wanted,” the voice said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Now jump!”

“Yes, Marget, immediately!” The captain appeared at the door. He gestured courteously to Svir and Cor. “Sir and madam, you have been granted an interview with the Queen.”

“The—Queen?’ Cor asked incredulously. She got no answer. They were pushed past the door and found themselves standing on the top tier of the Conciliar Facet. By the light of waning Seraph they saw a beautiful girl in a full-skirted dress.

Tatja turned to them. “You two look like hell,” she said.

Hedrigs started angrily toward her. All his fright and pain was transformed into hate for this monster who pretended to be human. There was a scuttling sound on the floor, then a tugging at Svir’s clothing. A soft wet nose nuzzled his neck. Ancho! Svir’s hands reached up and petted the trembling animal.

“Marget?” asked Coronadas. “Queen? Are you really the Lost Princess of Crownesse?”

“Since you were in on part of the scheme, I suppose you might as well know the truth. You can’t do anything about it. I was no more Marget of Sandros than you. But now I am incontrovertibly the Queen. My fingerprints match those of the Princess which are kept in the Crown Room. You should have seen the look on Bencsh’s face when the Lord High Minister announced that I was heir to the Crown. The Regent had the Royal Children murdered twenty years ago. The job was bobbled and he couldn’t produce bodies that would pass an autopsy. He knew I was a fraud but there was no way he could prove it without revealing that he was guilty of regicide.”

Svir looked out over the curving dome of the Keep toward the city. The crowd sounds came clear and faint through the air. The crowd had moved away from the waterfront. There would be no sacrifices tonight—the people had been told that the Crown had been claimed. Crownesse had a Queen—that called for the largest of festivals, a celebration that would go on for many days. Hedrigs turned to Tatja Grimm. “You had to lie and cheat and steal and—probably—murder to do it, but you certainly got what you wanted. You control the most powerful country in the world. I’ve wondered so many times what could make you as vicious as you are. Now I know. The hidden motive that mystified me so much was simple megalomania. Female ‘Tar Benesh’ has taken over from male. Is this the end of your appetites,” said Svir, putting as much derision and hate into his voice as he could, “or will you one day rule all Tu?”

Tatja smiled at Cor and Svir—the same scornful, bitter smile they had seen so often before. “You never were very bright, were you, Svir? It’s possible that I’ll take over the world. As a matter of fact I probably will. It will be a by-product of my other plans. I chose Crownesse very carefully. The country has immense physical resources. If there are large heavy-metal deposits anywhere, they are in Crownesse. The government is talented and dedicated. Most administrative posts are awarded on the basis of civil-service tests. And the entire Bureaucracy is fanatically dedicated to one person—the legal holder of the Crown. They served Tar Benesh and his evil for twenty years, and they will serve me just as faithfully. I will not be bothered with coups and elections, as I might if I took over one of the archipelagates.

“We’ve reached a very critical point in the development of civilization—in case you don’t realize it. In the past century there have been a number of really basic scientific discoveries made in all parts of the world. The pharmacists of the Tsanart Islands are very close to immortality drugs. A physicist in the Osterlei Archipelagate developed that picture-maker we use. All over the world, revolutionary advances are being made. Sometimes I think that organizations like Tarulle are responsible for this. For centuries they spread ideas from island to island until finally scientists stopped thinking of them as fantasy and actually invented what writers described. I’m making a gift of that Fantasie collection to Tarulle, by the way.”

“That’s big of you,” snapped Svir. Grimm ignored him.

“All these inventions and techniques are going to have effects far beyond what is obvious. Just think what that picture-taker will do for parallax astronomy. You’ll be able to make pictures of all observations. If these inventions were brought together and worked over intensively, the changes would be even more spectacular. But you people out in the islands are too lazy to do that. The people of Crownesse are not. They’ve had to work awfully hard just to stay alive here on The Continent. They will take your inventions and use them and develop more inventions—until they control the entire planet.”

Tatja looked up into the sky, at Seraph and the bright star Prok. “You know, there is a very common legend among the Wildmen at the center of The Continent. The legend says that man originally came from the stars, that he landed on The Continent and lost his magical arts to the storm and wind. Sounds like a Fantasie story, doesn’t it? But imagine—if it is true, then the races of men live among the stars, their empires so vast that they can ‘forget’ whole planetary systems. They may have colonized Seraph at the same time as Tu. We are not alone.” As she spoke to them, Tatja’s voice changed, lost its authority and its spite. Now she spoke softly, sadly. Her shoulders slumped. For a moment she wasn’t the master of events, but a young girl, very much alone, and very lonely. “No, Svir, ruling this world does not interest me, except for one thing. I’ve never found anyone 1 can talk to, anyone that can understand the things I often want to say. When I call you stupid—I mean it, even though you’re of above-average intelligence, and even though I just say it to make you angry.” She turned to look at Svir and Cor. Her eyes were soft, and her lower lip almost seemed to tremble. Her vast intelligence had crippled her, just as surely as it she had had no arms. In point of fact there was no person on Tu who was her equal. Svir suddenly understood the meaning of her scornful, hostile smile. It was the bitter, hopeless envy of a woman seeing well-adjusted people all around her and not being one herself.

“And that is why I am going to turn this world upside down, and regain the ancient arts that mythology said we once had. For somewhere in this universe there must be what I need most … a man.” The fallen goddess turned away from the parapet and the gay crowds. She didn’t look up as she walked slowly away.