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It does not matter, Scogil briefed Eron. The Eggs with the final Predictor's seventh level are not being released in the Wisp and are not being manufactured there. There are no plans to upgrade the Coronesefrom astrologer to psychohistorian. They are being used only as an astrological infection vector. Others of the Oversee are in charge of elevating talented members of the target population to advanced status. Konn’s task force will find in the Wisp only astrologers. Scogil was a game player with psychohistory as the rule book and futures as the winnings.

Even though Eron had reworked predictive mathematics to eliminate its main contradiction, he had been brought up within a worldview where psychohistory meant a single benign future determined by a single monolithic organization, i.e., history from the Founder’s necessarily Imperial point of view. A trap. He was becoming very fond of Scogil’s mind as well as exasperated by his angry ghoul. He remembered his tutor as a mellower man, almost too mellow. Perhaps the old Murek had achieved that mellowness only by burying his anger in his fam.

Otaria balanced the three male views of Osa-Scogil and Kambu with a lighter touch more interested in the inner energy that motivated mortal man over the vast span of galaxies and time. She knew her history. When she judged one of Eron’s moral monologs to be pretentious she offered a funny historical anecdote to blunt his sharpness. Scogil she teased because she had known him as a man. And for every point that Nejirt made, she had a mischievous counterexample, delighting in being contrary.

Nejirt threw her only once. Without disputing a particularly cutting barb, he brought out a black card. “May I contradict you with a simple gift?”

She took the card with a puzzled distrust.

“The encryption codes to Hanis’ personal archives.” He read the incredulity in Eron’s face. “No, the Admiral shouldn’t have those in his possession, but then”—he shrugged—“he’s been tracking Hanis for a long time.”

“You can’t be suggesting unlimited access?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I’m not privy to the Admiral’s mind. He wants you to have full recourse to the past.”

“But not the present?”

“The pace of present events would distract you.”

As a result Eron-Hiranimus spent hours rooting about with Otaria in Hanis’ old study. The deposed Rector’s files consisted mainly of annotated pointers to the restricted library of the Pscholars. He was an organizer more than an original thinker. Otaria loved this kind of wallow with the relish of a gossip and a historian who has lucked into a musty store of documents unseen by man for ages. Eron, on the other hand, took the opportunity to roam over the full range of the official future history. As a Seventh Rank student he had worked with only a tiny part of it of which he remembered little. Scogil had a special interest in the plans Hanis had made for certain regions of the Galaxy, his mind almost automatically working up counter-predictions to futures he found disagreeable, some aspects of which he shared with Eron. A program whose inevitable result would be the hybridizing of Helmarian culture with it neighbors brought out the most indignation.

The renaissance Jars had intended to impose upon the Empire was awesome in its scope. Eron was reminded of a book he had once seen, a collection of sketches of architectural marvels which had never been built. He felt a stab of sympathy for the old codger—how else could a man of such lofty dreams have reacted to Eron’s dissertation outlining in the clearest mathematical terms why his life’s work was doomed?

With trepidation Eron decided to attempt activation of his own personal student files. In all likelihood they were wiped. They had once resided as a symbiotic subroutine of the Great Galactic Model. Though he had never been of high enough rank himself to revise that vast model, a student was allowed to test modifications from within a walled domain. He couldn’t remember his entrance code, but it seemed that foresight had inserted it as a riddle in the index of his dissertation based on the poetry of Emperor Arum-the-Patient.

Otaria peered over his shoulder. Instead of receiving a notification of erasure, his call triggered a secondary startling security check: “Authority level uncertain. Additional information requested. What city was bombed on the 53rd watch of Parsley, 14,798?”

Konn must have blocked erasure at the time of Eron’s trial! What a strange man!

His befuddled organic brain was going to have to find an answer to that question. Scogil might contain libraries but not that bit of information. Was it “B”? What began with “B”? Recklessly he input the name “Bremen” and—miraculously—opened up access to the currently defined state function of the galactic civilization. He tested. His own tools were still intact. That took a big strain off his brain; he knew he could use his old tools, but he didn’t know if he had enough left of his mind, even with Scogil’s assistance, to recreate them. Immediately he began to demonstrate to his ghoul why the Oversee would fail to achieve their goals. They, too, were using classical mathematics to predict their way through a peculiar psychohistorical crisis for which the mathematics of the Founder did not apply.

He got the same reaction from Scogil as he had first from Konn and then from Hanis. He shrugged; every century had its cardinals.

Eron calculated that it was just about time for the Admiral to make his grand entrance. Keeping the people who were important to him waiting and sweating a little was his style. He wanted to make sure that Eron Osa knew that Konn had power and that Konn chose to exercise his power via a very different mode than had First Rank Jars Hanis. There was to be no relentless bullying, no ultimatum, no conflagration of fams, no draconian solutions. That was the method by which the Admiral got his way.

When the curmudgeon finally came to dinner (on schedule), he appeared in the uniform of Ultimate Sam’s Amazing Air Fangs: gold-braided knee-length bluecoat with the tricorn headpiece of a thirteen-star general. He held under his arm a box of Eron’s favorite biscuits from the commissary near the Lyceum study carrels—as well as a heavy briefcase, which meant a long work session after the wine. It was so like Konn to remember the little details which were much more powerful than logic. Eron smiled and sneaked open the biscuits. Vanilla bunny rabbits with cherry eyes. But he still felt merciless. It was all a serious military campaign to this crusty old Admiral. Konn wasn’t going to enjoy defeat. But he had never, to Eron’s knowledge, burned anybody at the stake for disagreeing with orthodox reasoning.

“Good that you found time to see us, sir.”

“That has to wait! First my bladder urges me to see the facilities. Pissing with Hanis has always been an extraordinary affair.” When the Admiral returned from the dispozoria he picked up the conversation with Eron. “You’ve made an astonishing recovery for a young man shot down in flames without a parachute. For the sake of the rest of us, I was hoping you’d remain in a semicoma for a few more years.” Magda emerged from the dining room. “No fights! It will collapse my souffle.”

“How can I not fight? In dire emergencies, that’s what cunning Admirals do.” He turned to Eron. “Can that thing in your head hear me?”

“He’s still sorting out the babble.”

“Good. Then I can insult him, and you can diplomatically soften my remarks since you’ve been acting more like an ambassador for the heathen enemy than as my humble prisoner of war,” admonished Konn.