“All right, all right,” said a calmer Osa Senior. He stared down quizzically at his son’s slight figure. “So...you’ve been studying the scholastic scene? Serious study! What a change!” Sarcasm. “Yes, there are better schools than Van-hosen,” he agreed with the grayness of ashes. “They are also expensive. Even getting you to Mowist is expensive. Do you realize how many people live and die on the planet of their birth simply because it is too expensive for them to leave it? You complain about your fam—you call it ‘junk,* you arrogant little beast—and do you know what I had to pay to get my hands on one of such ‘inferior’ quality? And do you know how expensive it is to send you off to school so that... Oh, Space it! You are going to Vanhosen. And,” he commanded, “you are going to do well. Or I will wring your neck. Now get out of here!”
It was during this speech that Eron understood why his father had been taking those bribes all these years. He was in need of money for his son! Sons were even more expensive than mistresses! The revelation shocked Eron speechless. Still, he couldn’t abandon his defiance. “I’ll never go to Vanhosen!” He was as close to tears as he could get without shaming himself. Later, he didn’t remember leaving his father’s office or dropping down the verticule or renting a {lighter to retreat into the hills, for he didn’t become conscious of his surroundings again until he was among the remnants of yesteryear’s Agander.
The rented flighter he left somewhere down below. He drove his wilting body to keep on running. He ran atop a crumbling windwall, his hair wild in the steady wind. Nothing seemed reasonable at the present moment The ruins overlooked a sun-drenched valley hundreds of kilometers across and...fifty meters straight down a talus slope. The wall that took the impact of his young feet had been struggling with twenty-six centuries of neglect and could hardly be considered safe. Pieces of it had been fainting into the waiting abyss for the past millennium.
His fam began to deliver to him probability-of-accident data in bright visual overlay, images of a gust-blown body
inducing a rock-slide tumble. In days of yore, standing here, he would have been picked up by the wind and blown away; the eons of decay had ruined the windwall’s ability to amplify mountain breezes up to gale strength. The ruin had once been the feeder of a power plant, Agander’s way of coping with the now almost forgotten collapse of Empire. When fusion power is gone, there is always the wind and the water.
In a laggardly response to his fam’s warning, the boy stopped running. But his energy wouldn’t contain itself. He stayed in one place on the wall—dancing the jig, his shirt flapping in the wind. He stared out over the valley. The Alcazar was almost invisible in the green expanse of forest. Only bits of the spire that communicated with the stars were apparent through the haze. To the left he could see the eraser marks where an ancient city had once been laid out—before Time changed its mind. He was still determined to defy his father. It was a point of honor now not to go to Vanhosen.
He couldn’t talk to his mother about his decision. And he could only dream about confiding to Melinesa his innermost needs. None of his friends would understand. There was only that strange alien farman he could trust To trust his tutor upset the boy because no Ganderian really trusted any farman, but nevertheless Eron trusted him. It wasn’t as if Murek was his friend. He didn’t know what or who Murek was—except that his tutor was better than any school Eron had ever attended.
He didn’t even know where Murek Kapor lived—somewhere in the True City that served the Ulman of the Alcazar discreetly from behind the hills—because he had never needed that information. But just the thought of going there tonight triggered his fam into supplying a map and pictures. Ah, Kapor owned an apartment by the Sacred Park. In a black tower. He could reach it shortly after nightfall.
4
THE AGENT OF THE OVERSEE, 14,790 GE
... surprising countermeasures used by the Second Empire Pscholars to restabilize the local long-range politics in the isolated stellar region of the Ulmat are not traditional and suggest that our interference has been detected... unorthodox mathematics... Within sixty years there is a fifty percent probability of...unless...Recommend stealthy abandonment of the Ulmat Offensive... Our lack of effective operatives on Splendid Wisdom can no longer be tolerated.
—Overseer Inspectorate HICode Report Red-75
Dated Version: 14,790y/02m/92w/3h/10i
Author: SeliCom
It was fatal for a seditionist to let his identity find its way into the data’ banks of Splendid Wisdom’s Second Empire, and so Hiranimus Scogil guarded his true name behind aliases and his true biology behind genetic masks—not a particularly difficult task in a Galaxy of multitudes so vast that the roving proctors of the Empire chose to maintain order by ignoring individuals in favor of management by statistical aggregate. This slim youth of twenty-five did not even exist in any High database, not on Splendid Wisdom or in any Sector Central. But as Murek Kapor...
Most people carried their fam at the base of the neck or as a collar or headpiece and thought of it simply as an auxiliary information source that communicated with their brain via tuned probe when they needed fast data or detailed graphics or heavy-duty analytical faculties. Scogil’s was different. His unique “familiar” had been modified to hold a second personality.
After four years, Hiranimus Scogil half believed he was Murek Kapor, a star-wandering tutor who had found a comfortable position in the highlands of Agander’s Great Island, teaching genteel mathematics to the precocious Osa boy. He chafed, not pleased that the Ulmat’s Oversee Group had cursed him with a complacent cover persona more inclined to observation than action. We become what we do. He chafed as a mere observer. It wasn’t enough to monitor a plan whose script had been computed a 150 years ago. A field agent also needed to be responsive. All successful plans are fine-tuned on the battlefield.
This Murek Kapor thing was annoyingly capable of overriding Scogil’s more daring initiatives* if not his thoughts. Scogil could overwhelm this parasite in cases of dire emergency, even in cases of whim, but such an effort was far too exhausting to be carried out on a daily basis—it was easier to leave “him” in control. And Kapor was the kind of character who couldn’t even imagine adding a faster spin to the Galaxy; he was a viewer of life, reluctant to commit to the hurly-burly, an earnest wretch whose seriousness extended no further than an interest in his afternoon walks.
What better place to stroll, today, than down a slope of ruins among the thrust of pyre-trees rooted in stones and rubble so rounded by age and redolent with ferns that no one any longer remembered their ancient purpose? Naturally, grumbled Hiranimus Scogil to himself, his damn Kapor. identity was content to take his damn strolls alone.
He pushed his way under a carmine pyre-branch—and emerged into a spectacularly tranquil copse. Delightful. It surprised him. Sometimes Scogil had to admit to himself that he was beginning to enjoy these walks, too; damn, damn, and Spacedamn, it was becoming easier and easier to fall into Kapor’s demoralizing habit of contentment.