uranian throne - episode sixteen

confluence at ao

by
robert gibson


[For the story so far, see: 1: Dynoom; 2: Hyala;
3: the nebulee; 4: Exception; 
5: the lever of power;
6: the infrastructure throbs; 
7: the claw extends;
8: the brain-mist writhes; 9: the last card;
10: the londoner; 11: the terran heir;
12: the city cracks; 13: the validator rips;
14: the heartland beckons; 15: zyperan]

[ + links to:  Glossary - Timeline - Maps - Survey of Ooranye - Plan of Olhoav -
guide to published stories ]

1

The pilot's slump onto the rearward deck had tilted the bow a degree or two upwards.  Most fortunate, this unconscious aim: for it oriented the skimmer into a gradual climb until, after about a furlong, it reached its six-yard "ceiling", where the flight levelled off.  At this modest altitude the vehicle's blind trajectory was able to surmount the obstacles which littered the plains: the boulders, shrubs and lesser crags.    
    That was one precondition of Nyav Yuhlm's fantastically improbable survival.  It is not sufficient explanation.  Additional luck was necessary for him to miss the taller crags into which he would have crashed and died; he must, then, have been favoured by the accidents of topography.  Still that isn't enough.   Far more kindness from fate was needed to preserve the life of a man in his position: a man in a coma, borne on a vehicle traversing approximately fifteen thousand miles of hostile wilderness.  For an unconscious and defenceless voyager across Fyaym survival seems so vastly improbable that historians have been moved to speculate on the possibility of deliberate favouritism: that's to say on the toleration, or even mercy, of those malign Fyayman powers which ought to have destroyed him.
    Indeed we conclude that the animate forces which loomed along his path through Fyaym must have drawn back, by chance or will, casually or promptly as the case may be, in order to allow him passage.  Of these hesitations and hesitators we know nothing, else you would now be listening to an epic of a different stripe.  Unlikely it is, in any case, that more than a tiny fraction of the tale of Nyav's transect of Fyaym will ever be told.  We cannot rule out the happy chance that somebody may some day catch a sigaklya, an evidencer-cloud, which will turn out to bear a recording of those days; and what a coup for historians that would be - but otherwise the scantiness of our knowledge must remain almost as great as that of the voyager himself, who eventually awoke in Syoom with no knowledge of where he had been.
    We must make one exception.  One event, which logic tell us took place about two days' flight from Zyperan, we can reconstruct...

2

Normally, for a mounted Uranian wayfarer, the continuous feed of fuel to a motor is easily maintained.  On skimmers of more than rudimentary design, as soon as the current fuel-phial is exhausted a simple spring mechanism ejects it and the next phial on the row is shunted into place automatically.  This ought to have happened to the motor of Nyav's vehicle as soon as its feed ran empty.
    However, some gob of slime from Zyperan's drenching collapse must have clogged the response mechanism.  An observer would have seen the lights at bow and stern die and would have heard the hum fade. 
    Remarkably, there were observers amid the breeze-blown, howling wilderness.  A blank-faced swarm, mounted on skimmers far cruder than that of the Daon, darted to encircle it at a cautious distance, to watched the skimmer's momentum ebb into drift.   
    Accustomed to prey on the borders of Syoom, they rarely managed to find a human victim during their mystic wanderings in deep Fyaym; hence they were startled to find this drifting vehicle, which moreover appeared to be of an unusually expensive make.  The discoverers therefore gesticulated wildly at the inert, sprawled occupant, their limbs jerking with a frenzy heightened even beyond the usual behaviour of vrars, the strange, child-like pirates of Ooranye.        Any traveller who falls into the clutches of those berserker people is unlucky in the extreme.  We would have expected Nyav's story to be truncated forthwith - but what saved him was how strongly he smelled.   
    The vrar-chief was first to notice the reek.  It was his role to seize a captive and take priority of plunder, which was why he had approached ahead of the others, but no sooner had he closed the gap to within two yards of his intended prey than he halted, glared about and snarled at his followers to stay back.     
    He drew his laser, then hesitantly re-sheathed it, not liking what wafted at his nostrils.  Pressure was on him for a quick decision, for his people would not be restrained for long, but instinct told him loud and clear that no sponnd-slash would erase what he sniffed here, and, besides, the captive would be no use to them, for you can't enslave a dead man.  The fellow looked quite dead, head lolling, forearm dangling over the skimmer's right side.  Pointless to cut him up.  Just tip him over the side to permit access to the forward compartment where valuables are likely to be stored -    
    But that wouldn't do either.  Undeniable, the nauseous effluvium from the encrustations which streaked the becalmed vehicle and stained its pilot's cloak; undeniable likewise what clanged in the vrar chief's brain:    
    We don't want this.  What we do want, is distance between it and us.     
    Out of the stew of his emotions the vrar concocted wisdom.  He lunged forward, struck the clogged phial-replacement mechanism with his palm, and then hastily reversed.   
    Daon Nyav's skimmer lurched into motion.
    The vrar-chief's men, meanwhile, had edged close enough to sniff the same odour and reach the same conclusion as their leader had done; the entire swarm thronged to congratulate him, and to spit and yell after the departing stranger.

3

The nomad chief must have done an effective job, because we know that the next fuel-phial, and the next, slotted into place when their time came, continuing Nyav's skimmer's propulsion uninterrupted for eight more days, until at last he crossed the invisible statistical boundary of sfy-50 and so passed from Fyaym into Syoom.    
    The wild, empty plain looked no different at first.  Gradually, though, on the horizon a low ridge became distinct, straight and regular, and extending to left and right from the viewpoint of the skimmer as it approached; a thing one would not see in Fyaym.   
    The Innb-Namrol line is more modern than the other great monorails of Syoom, most of which were built in the Zinc Era, over two hundred million days ago, but it follows the classic design: embankment height seven yards; sides tilted sixty degrees.  A skimmer hurtling at right angles into that mass at fifty miles per hour would smash.  Nyav's flight path encountered it at an oblique angle which fortunately allowed him a cushioned skim that just cleared the surface. 
    Thus, up he went, and over and down, to appear suddenly amongst a group of about fifty wayfarers camped at the base of the further side.   
    They were ready for him.  A look-out on the embankment had warned them of a stranger's approach.     
    Only when he hurtled down into the midst of them, though, were they able to glimpse, under the streaks that stained his clothing, the blue cloak of a Daon's rank.  If they had seen this earlier, would they have acted differently?  Most likely they themelves could not have answered that question.  As it was, a shout, an arm raised in command, and three skimmers rose from the ground, rapidly to overtake, board and halt the vehicle.   
    Their own plans made them suspicious of others' appearances; otherwise they might have let him go on the sound principle that mysteries are well let alone.  The ironic truth, in this case, is that he was not at all relevant to them until their action involved him.  It was their own guilt that was to slip them down the muddy banks of destiny's stream.  Of this they had no inkling.   
    In appearance, their encampment could have been that of a bunch of innocent archeologists, who had ransacked a site deep in Fyaym and then paused on their way home (some of their parked skimmers were laden with objects; other finds were spread on the ground for sorting).  In fact, this was no scientific expedition.  As a group it lacked even the monstrous innocence of the vrars, and it took the opposite decision to theirs with regard to the stranger on the skimmer.   
    "Heref and Joat - put a tow-line on him.  Time we were moving," their leader said.   
    "Skimmjard, sponndar G-S," growled the sullen Joat and moved to obey.  The woman, Heref, similarly sturdy, went to help him.
    While he watched his orders being carried out, a knowing smile quirked behind the grizzled beard of Grilk Sedond.  He could sense that his decision, by and large, was popular. 
    He added, "And put a blurfold on the fellow.  And we must have one on you too, Tem Talfarn," he added, swinging round.   
    The man he thus addressed was a wiry figure, shorter than most Uranians, who lounged beside one of the laden skimmers.   
    "Why do that to me now?" he inquired with a sneer at the approaching henchmen who raised the translucent fabric of the "blur" towards his face.   
    "Because we're getting close to our destination."  That was Sedond's blunt reply to Talfarn; and to Joat and Heref, who were mumbling as they fixed the tow line onto the stranger's skimmer, he added: "You needn't complain; it's really not far now."   
    Having overseen the wrap of the "blurs" and the fixing of the line, Grilk Sedond gave the signal to resume their journey towards Ao.  Thus, now sporting two prisoners instead of one, the Dex Galooga - the succession conspiracy - rose from the plain and sped in the direction of the Sdindeeng Hills.

4

Nyav Yuhlm awoke to the sound of laughter; it took him some minutes to understand that he was not dreaming.    
    Since his traumatic victory over Zyperan, time and distance had worked their healing effects upon him.  They edged his mind towards a readiness to perceive; however, that same passage of time had severely weakened him physically, with a lack of food and water that would have killed his former Terran body and had left his Uranian body close to wastage.      
    Vaguely at first, impressions came to him.  Some were nothing new: the breeze on his skin, and the dark blue of the sky, showed no change from his long voyage.  But a difference now appeared to his groggy sight.  The dim orange slopes in the middle distance, their gentle gradients daubed with greenish smudges, hinted that he had reached a relatively fertile land.  Cultivable land?  Had he reached the settled belt around one of the fabled cities of Syoom?  Excitement made him try to move his arms and head.  Physical discomfort, pangs, restrictions... these woke him more sharply, with the idea that he was in the hands of enemies: for he lay on the ground, his arms and legs bound.   
    The scene's dreamy appearance - he next understood - was due to a blurfold that covered his eyes and limited his vision to vague shapes.  He would not be able to distinguish faces, so he might as well not wriggle to stare at his captors.
    Caution meanwhile over-rode his hunger and thirst, so that rather than croak out requests for food and water he preferred to lie still, listening.   
    Laughter broke out again.  Something devious was going on, it seemed, as if the boss, though in control, were "playing his fish" with a long line.
    "You're no good at it, sponndar G-S!" a woman's voice declared with a knowing mirth to which other chuckles joined in.   
    "All right then," said their target with the firm voice of a commander who could concede a point good-naturedly.  "I, Grilk Sedond, hereby relinquish the role of Hostile Voice.  In which case, somebody else - "
    "Not me!  Don't elect me!" cried the woman.  "I don't know enough!"   
    "You don't want to know enough, Heref," retorted Grilk Sedond.  "In which case I elect... you, Tem Talfarn."   
    Some hoots greeted this, but then a silence fell.     
    "That's actually quite a good idea," remarked Heref.        
    "Yeah, go ahead, Tem, be the Dissuader," growled Joat.  "Do a better job of it than our zyr."   
    Nyav, meanwhile, as he strained to grasp what was going on, felt a welcome little touch of assistance from his lurking Terran personality, Neville Yeadon.  Dissuader - Hostile Voice - "devil's advocate" as we Terrans would say.    
    What? asked Nyav of himself, and received the answer:    
    That's how they aim to test their chances - by listening to all that's wrong with their plan - before they then go ahead and do it anyway.     
    At that point the prisoner Tem Talfarn, speaking Nouuan with a pert intonation, said, "Hmm... You asked for it.  If it's irrefutable arguments you want - "   
    "No need for that," came a jocular comment; "just be genuine!  Put some feeling into it, Tem!"   
    "Very well, here goes: your Dex Galooga..."   
    "Don't name it!"   
    "Ah, so sorry..." (To the listening ears of Nyav Yuhlm the sarcasm of his fellow-captive seemed heartening though the context as yet was completely obscure.)  "Let us begin, as you do, from your premise that Oreneg Vadon MUST win.  For that to happen, he MUST turn out to be better, so the process MUST be fixed to register that outcome.  And though it shouldn't need to be fixed, it will have to be if it MUST be - because your special pleading arranges the rules to ensure that your special pleading is right - "   
    "Enough," boomed the voice of the zyr.  "Time to carry the box round."   
    For several eerie minutes Nyav heard gasps of appreciation while presumably an object called "the box" was carried from spot to spot round the encampment.
    Presently it was borne close to where he lay, and his mind began to "hear":

Don't understand me
Don't understand me
I do the thing
That cannot be done

In an odd way this was the least mysterious event so far in his short experience of Syoom, because the people of outposts like Olhoav have long known what it is like to stumble across thought-warnings from the gadgetary debris of unknown, previous cycles; every lifetime or so, a few such disturbing relics of aeon-dead civilizations are discovered in the wastes of what is now Fyaym.  Most folk assume it's best to leave them be.      
    The zyr's satisfied voice finally broke the silence.   
    "There - it should work, should it not?"   
    Nobody disagreed out loud. 
    Changing the subject, Heref shouted:  "The look-out is signalling, sponndar zyr!"   
    Nyav heard the hum of a skimmer; he surmised that Grilk Sedond had taken off to investigate.     
    A minute passed and then the zyr announced to the gathering, "Dersnam's patrol is on is way here, on schedule.  You all know what to do."      "We're all set, zyr G-S, but have we decided about the 'backwash'?" asked Heref.   
    A gruffer voice said, "It's take him away with us or kill him."
    "Don't see why we can't just leave him here," mused Grilk Sedond.  "He won't have heard anything..."   
    Idiotically close to croaking out Whom are you calling backwash, the Daon of Olhoav clamped his teeth.  Then from a cry ("Look, he's awake!") he realized he had given himself away, he had writhed in his bonds -
    "Fooled!  Get - " the infuriated leader began.     
    The hiss of a sponnd-bolt cut short Grilk Sedond's yell.  Other cries and the hum of vehicles irrupted onto the scene.  Nyav in his frustration contorted further - if only he could rip the blurfold away -
    The hectic sounds died and he heard calm, new voices.  A cupped pair of hands held up his head, other hands snipped the blurfold off him, and at last he had his first sharp view in Syoom.

5

A vast man, swathed in a blue much darker than the Daon's own garb, was frowning down at him.  The heavy features were sternly quizzical. 
    "This fellow," he spoke to an aide, "who can he be?  I'll warrant he's come from far across Fyaym."     
    "It would appear so, sponndar D-G-T."   
    D-G-T?  Three names?  Nyav's mind, wandering in his weakness and exhaustion, toyed with the idea.   
    Then a point of brilliance low in the heavens caught his eye, made him marvel and blink. 
    The sun!  That's what it had to be!  The sun, the sun...  He was now on Sunside.  Therefore he was seeing, for the first time in his life, the solar orb in the seventh planet's sky -
    "Can you hear me, voyager?"   
    Better answer.  He was being asked who he was.  Better not be rude.  He managed to declare, "I am Nyav Yuhlm, Daon of Olhoav."   
    "Hear that, Lahaz?  Olhoav!  He seems barely alive, and no wonder."  The big man patted his pockets like a smoker looking in vain for his matches, then again spoke aside to his aide: "Have you any spef for this fellow?"   
    Lahaz said, "Yes, here," and bent down to hand what was evidently a nutriment bar to Nyav, who fumbled to take it as he strove against a wave of dizziness.   
    "You bite it and drink, Daon Nyav: it's food outside, drink inside," said Lahaz more loudly.  Nyav bit into the thing and nibbled and drank gratefully, while the men standing over him watched him. 
    The bigger man murmured, "Olhoav...  that outpost.  Huhhh."  He wrinkled his nose.  "Fffaotch," he exclaimed at the odour which, though diminished, lingered on Nyav's clothes and vehicle.  "He must have met something bad on the way. - Daon Nyav!"   
    "I hear you, sponndar."   
    "You were a prisoner of the group that fired on me and my patrol: that makes you a friend of mine.  That, and your achievement as a voyager, prompts me to invite you as a guest to my estate.  I am Dersnam Gostomon Thull of Ao.  If, in good time, you tell me your story, I shall be further honoured."   
    "Thank you, sponndar," sighed Nyav Yuhlm.  "I shall be grateful for your hospitality and also for your guidance...  I bear a message, from my city, for the Sunnoad."   
    Dersnam stared in amazement.        
    "A message for the Sunnoad!"
    "You heard me aright."
    The Aoan slowly nodded, "All right, so be it.  But you come at an awkward time," he eventually replied.   
    "How?  What..."   
    "Sunnoad Arad Thastu 80436 is not expected to live many days longer.  Her successor is the person who will respond to your message, and we don't know who that will be."   
    "I see," murmured Nyav; "so I must wait a while."  From the effort it was taking him to get his words out, it was plain that he would in any case have to wait a while before he was in a suitable condition to bear a message to the Noad of Noads.   
    The courteous Aoan grandee smiled as he refrained from pointing this out.  He went on to say:  "Yes, one might demur at Fate's timing.  On the other hand the location is more apt."   
    "Location?" whispered the exhausted Nyav.
    "I mean," said Dersnam, "it so happens that our ailing Sunnoad was taken ill at Ao, and here you too are arrived in Aonian territory.  So you're well placed to be on hand when the successor is elected and the golden cloak is handed on.  Meanwhile, rest, Daon Nyav.  Rest and prepare yourself.  My aide, Lahaz Mnom, will look after you and bring you to my estate."  Dersnam paused.  "I will follow shortly; first I must examine the scene here.  I don't know what your captors were about.  Did you learn aught of that, Daon Nyav?"   
    Trying to focus, Nyav replied, "They spoke of one Oreneg Vadon.  They said he 'must win'." 
    Dersnam and Lahaz both frowned. 
    The former muttered, "Oreneg Vadon?"  (The name seemed to disturb them.)  "Are you sure you heard aright?  He is a good man.  He may well be the next Sunnoad."   
    "I heard aright," affirmed Nyav.   
    "Well... and was there anything else?"   
    "A 'box'," Nyav uncomfortably reported.  "A thought-emitting box that their leader brought round the camp: a thing that repeated, Don't understand me / Don't understand me / I do the thing / That cannot be done."    
    "Arrrhhhh!" growled Dersnam.  "Troublemakers scouring the rubbish of Fyaym to disturb our lives!  And we can't make their leader cough up his plan; he was killed in the fight.  Oh well.  We're strong enough to forget all about them.  Only - I've just lost four men to laser fire and if there are any clues lying around as to why this scrimmage occurred, I shall follow them up."   
    "Sorry I can't tell you more..." began Nyav.   
    "Don't worry - I expect to get something from their other prisoner," Dersnam bluffly remarked, raising his voice somewhat.  "Tem Talfarn will certainly be full of things to say."
    This elicited chuckles from his entourage.     
    Some good-humoured back-chat ensued, which Nyav was unable to follow.  Then, with a palms-on-chest bow, Dersnam turned away to pursue his investigation.
    Lahaz Mnom meanwhile gave orders for the Daon of Olhoav to be helped back onto his skimmer.  The vehicle, befouled as it was with the Zyperan's crusted remnant of slime - thanks to which Nyav's possessions had not been stolen, and now never would be, by the men of the late Grilk Sedond - still had the tow-line which the conspirators had fixed to it, and that line was now attached to Lahaz's skimmer.
    The party set off, Nyav managing to sit upright, blinking with frequent wonderment at the dazzling golden pinhead in the sky.

6

They floated at modest speed through a gentle hill country.  The miles went by; evidence of cultivation grew more frequent.  The ground becoming mostly terraced, with cultivated ledges of meaty, bulbous vegetation.  Spindly herds of multipeds browsed on ribbons of land between.                        Presently, over flatter terrain, they came to a patchwork of orange, purple and green fields and woods, where, at intervals of a few miles, human dwellings appeared.  These were single-storey mansions, low-roofed, and of cruciform plan.    
    All this occupied Nyav's interest until he became aware that the upper section of a towering shape had appeared beyond the horizon. 
    Already it loomed over all.  A beacon-topped pinnacle with a spiky halo of floodlights shed glimmers onto lines and dots which had to be the sky-platforms and moored airships of a mighty Syoomean city.     
    One of the escort, noticing his stare, nodded and waved, proudly speaking the name, "Ao", and with loyal fondness adding, "No less bright, I'll bet, than it was during the Paramountcy."
    For some minutes they remained headed straight that way, so that Nyav  guessed at first that some urban palace would be their destination.  Then the party slightly altered course, so he shrugged off that expectation, enjoying meanwhile the scenes which swam before his eyes, enjoying also the fortune which had conveyed him alive to this special hour.  (The journey was all the more pleasant as he was left in peace; his escort forbore to ply him with questions.)   
    Finally came the spiral approach along a tree-lined avenue to Dersnam's country home, the estate of Aonstaggana.  The mansion, of which the four wings jutted at him one after another as they curved round a circular colonnade, was surmounted by a skeletal dome of polished logs, each of which sprouted glossy foliage, and the profusion of overhead green gave the central court, into which they turned, a light magnificence.  In this enclosure, open to the sky and thus to the natural glow of the atmosphere, he began to sense the totality of Aonstaggana, subtly transmuting his feelings of trust and admiration into the gold of gratitude.  Lustrous gold, yet not too heavy; he need not fear too weighty a burden of obligation; he was confident that he could repay these people's kindness and hospitality.   
    One small doubt came to him after he had dismounted and been led to a luxurious bathroom.     
    "A change of clothes will be laid out for you," Lahaz Mnom assured.  "The staff meanwhile will see to the cleanup of your skimmer."    
    The skimmer that's a give-away...    
    Nyav almost replied, No, don't trouble yourselves; I'll see to it myself.  But that might have sounded a bit odd, or even like a rebuff - a risk he could not stomach.  Instead he would have to run the other risk. The inevitable questions.  After all, he must soon face them.  People in authority would naturally wish to know about where and how his skimmer had become beslimed, how he had escaped, what he had defeated -     
    Well, he'd just have to tell them.  He had done nothing wrong, in ridding the planet of Zyperan; quite the contrary.  Only, it was distasteful to talk about it...
    Eventually, bathed and cleanly attired, with his strength half restored, he sauntered from the suite, to be brought up short by the splendour of a genteel apparition: that of a lady, ponderous but beautifully serene, accompanied by two slim young girls of about three or four thousand days, rising to greet him.     
    "Daon N-Y, welcome to our home - which is yours for as long as you wish," uttered the lady in a tone of speech that reinforced Nyav's sense of security.  She added, "I am Saronna Gnadal Thull and these are my daughters, Alinvee and Kyteth."   
    Nyav Yuhlm bowed.  "You and your family, sponndar Saronna, have granted me what I most needed."   
    She smiled, "And that is - ?"   
    "A peaceful end to a long journey."
    "Naturally," she remarked, "we should know how to treat a Daon!"   
    "Yes, you even had the right colour cloak to lend me," Nyav replied, fingering the blue fabric that swathed him.   
    "The cloak," explained Saronna, "belonged to Dersnam's father.  He was Daon and then Noad of Ao.  Dersnam inherited the garb though of course he can never use it himself."     
    Indeed not, thought Nyav.  The historic taboo against hereditary rulers apparently persisted as strong as ever, in Syoom as in Olhoav.  The son of a Noad could never be Noad.  (At least, not Noad of the same city as his father.)  "Honoured," he responded, with another bow.   
    She then handed him a palm-sized summoner.  It was almost equivalent to being given the keys to the house.  Nyav took the gadget and bowed yet again, having run out of things to say.  Saronna continued,  "While you stay here you must always feel free to explore the house and gardens.  I have informed all the staff of who you are, so when they see your cloak they won't assume that you've replaced Daon Kalbaran Hezh of Ao!  Then at evenshine my husband, on his return, will invite you to the banqueting hall.  Alinvee and Kyteth," she laid her hands on her daughters' shoulders, "shall let you alone till then, though they can hardly wait to hear horror stories about your journey."   
    That was said with a smile, but Nyav thought it wise to comment, "In truth, I have memories which are not pleasant to tell."       
    "It would be surprising if that were not so.  But the telling can share the burden."  
    He could not agree, so he kept silent.  He ruefully noted how the girls' eyes sparkled with innocent excitement as their mother led them away.
    Now, how about that offer to wander around the estate?  He would take them up on that!

7

He stepped out into gardens which had looked pleasant and no more during his approach by skimmer.  Here from within, he was vastly more impressed; among jewelled buds and fruits, ornately convoluted stems, an undulating sweep of greenish blue sward, and glittering bulges of red, gold and orange shrubs, the effects combined in a hypnotic swirl about his winding path.      
    Noticing a man some yards off with a spade, digging a border, with some saplings awaiting plantation which lay across a wheelbarrow, Nyav decided to approach.  Keep in tune with what backgrounders are thinking.  As he approached, the fellow straightened.  News of the visitor must already have spread around the estate; the gardener's rugged mien was enlivened by his evident curiosity. 
    "Daon Nyav!" he enthused.  "I am Zaktik, Cultivator of the Fourth Section.  Welcome to the garden of Aonstaggana."   
    Bestow a compliment.  "I have never seen anything like this," Nyav remarked.    
    Zaktik nodded, "It is a sight to behold, no question.  I'm grateful you've noticed my corner!"   
    "A solace for a busy master?" probed Nyav.   
    Intelligence glittered in the other's face, but just as he opened his mouth, he became suddenly distracted.     
    Nyav, following the man's upward glance, beheld a cloud shaped like a spear or an arrow: a barbed scudder that was gaining in density as it slid towards the zenith.  Species identity is blurred for the predatory clouds of Ooranye, but it sufficed to know that this particular pest was of the harder variety, and that it had decelerated to the point at which it was about to swoop.     
    Uranians on Starside customarily react to this kind of situation either by fighting back directly or by taking shelter; Zaktik's next move was a stage more sophisticated and a complete surprise to Nyav.  Drawing a control-tablet from his cloak the gardener pointed it, not up but horizontally.  Immediately a nearby shrub, as if suddenly awakened, suffered commotion: out of its glossy leaves poked a dozen stems that twisted up to aim at the cloud. 
    Next, Zaktic depressed a second button, one which caused the stems to hiss and spurt laser fire.  (Just like an anti-aircraft battery, sloshed the Terran ego in the bilges of Nyav's brain.)   
    "You have to pre-empt them," the gardener cheerfully remarked, pressing a third button which caused the laser stems to retract.  "That's that.  Well, you were lucky, Daon N-Y.  One can go days without seeing such action."          "Looks like you're ready when the moment comes."
    "Yes, the boss has equipped us well."
    "Well, it's fortunate he knows how to do it," said Nyav speculatively.   
    "He's got the stuff, sure.  He's always prepared to go out on a haul."   
    Guessing that this meant to go scavenging or treasure-hunting in Fyaym's perpetual unknown, Nyav said thoughtfully, "Like the gang he rescued me from; they (so I reckon) were - " he raised his brows - "'out on a haul'."   
    "Ah," responded Zaktik with a light laugh, "we're bound to resemble our enemies, aren't we, up to a point?"   
    "We are - up to a point."  Bidding farewell to the belligerent gardener, Nyav retraced his steps.  That's right, shift gears, said the inner voice.  Nyav mentally scowled.  He threw a thought down to the basement of his being:  What means this sudden outburst of commentary, Neville Yeadon?  Not hinting, by any chance, that I'm being a trifle slow?    
    You mean, slow to foresee that an estate near the Fyayan border requires defences.  No slower than I.    
    Slow you may be, but you're apparently wide awake, said Nyav, directing his thought as though it were speech (and aware every moment of being drawn more deeply in to this extraordinary conversation with himself).
    No need to be jumpy about that; yes, I'm awake and aware, but it's not as though I fancied myself an expert on Syoom.    
    So you're not putting in an application to take back the helm.    
    Not a bit of it.  You think I claim to read situations as well as you can?  If that were so, I would already be 'at the helm'.  Relax.  I, just the same as you, am feeling my way.  Aristotle (or someone) said that a friend is a second self; well, in me you have the best friend possible, since I actually am your second self.    
    A priceless asset, thought Nyav, heavily.    
    Well, let's just say, you most likely will need a second opinion now and again.  I thus may compensate for the dubious origin of your rank.  You weren't appointed Daon for the usual reasons, remember!    
    All right, all right... I have to admit that Noad Barlayn Lamiroth appointed me Daon of Olhoav as a manoeuvre to defeat Dempelath's designs, not because of any renl ability I possessed.  In fact, on the contrary, I got the job because I was incapable.  And yet, in the thousands of days since then, I hope I can honestly say I have grown in the role; I have become quite lremd...    
    Of course you have, but listen, this place isn't Olhoav, nor is it the grass-forest just outside Olhoav.  You're way away from all that; you're on Sunside now, and this is SYOOM.  So watch out!      
    I'll do my best.  I can expect some support from people...    
    That's because - lucky for you so far - folk seem to be giving you the respect due to the rank which you possess, since, in theory, a Daon is a Daon, whether appointed in the furtherst back of beyond or right here in the Sunnoad's realm.  But, man, you'd better live up to it. 
    With the briefest shiver of laughter Nyav headed back to the mansion, rattled but also braced by the "conversation" with his alter ego.   
    He realized he was quite happy with that Terran rider in his skull: the more so, as the passenger seemed content to remain such and no more.  "After all," reflected the Daon, "he's even more out of his depth here than I am.  It's true that I'm from a far Starside outpost, but at least I'm on my own planet.  Yet precisely because he's from so much further away, he may (I suspect) eventually prove to be my... my..."
    Ace in the hole.

8

He was resting and thinking, when somebody knocked on the door of the room he had been given.    
    He opened to see the grandee's aide: Lahaz Mnom.
    Softly, and standing back respectfully, the man announced:
    "Sponndar D-G-T has not yet returned.  But - we know he would wish us not to delay on his account.  Therefore the staff would be honoured to invite you to our quarters for an informal snack, Daon Nyav."   
    "Right away?  Very well, and thanks to you all."   
    He followed the aide down corridors and into a dim room.  About twenty staff members were ranged about a wooden table; they were introduced to him: stewards, surveyor-builder-craftsmen, gardeners, caterers and farmers, while on a nearby rug a snuffling pet ranna rotated on its belly-leg.  One chair was empty; the Daon was beckoned to it.  Amid the smiles, nods and gestures of welcome, he thought to himself: Here it comes; they'll be wanting the story of my life...     
    It was indeed obvious that these folk were aching to question him, the messenger from Starside.  Howwever they let him eat in peace for some minutes, to the accompaniment of small talk about the estate and local matters, including (Zaktik the gardener being present) defence against predatory clouds. 
    Presently, in a less casual tone, and speaking for all, Lahaz said:
    "We shall always remember this date, the ten-million-five-hundred-and-forty-three-thousand-six-hundred-and-ninth day of Era Eighty-Nine, shan't we, my friends?  For us, Daon N-Y, you're a legend come to life."   
    Nyav said neutrally, "Being new here, I find everything is news to me, including what you've just said."
    "But it stands to reason."  Warming to his theme, Lahaz then recited the names, lambent with mystery, of the almost mythical outposts on the world's sunless hemisphere - Deev, Karth, Nusun, Poleva, Koar, Olhoav...  "And all of a sudden you, Daon Nyav, a traveller from that last one, from Olhoav the Lost, sit with us here.  A privilege we shall never forget."     
    So then the Daon of Olhoav gave them what they wanted.  It was only fair.  He talked and they listened, spellbound, to his account of life in the Starside city and in the surrounding flaon-scrorr, and of his subsequent exile in the nearby grass forest or smurtu-oyor.  He told them of wise Dynoom the Ghepion, the ancient city-brain.  He narrated what he knew of the tyrant Dempelath and his revolutionary rise.  To keep his language respectable he told the story without mentioning the taboo words backgrounder and foregrounder, wirrip and forg.  Next, he intensified the astonishment and fascination of his audience when he confessed his own dual consciousness, Terran and Uranian.  He explained that this was the fruit of Dynoom's desperate meddling with fate-lines that stretch from world to world. 
    At this point in the evening he began to sense some fidgets in the basement of his mind: the Neville Yeadon persona crying up from the depths to warn him not to give too much away.  But the suggestions lacked authority; the hunches that backed them were weak; and Nyav over-rode that fidgety inner voice.  He continued to narrate.
    Presently, while the air dimmed further into evenshine, he began to respond to questions.  Somebody reached to light a pillared lamp in the middle of the table; thenceforward its glow bathed the rapt faces around.  Some staff members had to leave to attend to duties elsewhere, but others arrived to take their coveted places.  Nyav idly noted that the gardener, Zikdak, who had been part of his audience earlier on, had departed.  The comings and goings were quiet and discreet, no one wishing to interrupt the flow of the meeting. 
    It was different when the owner of the estate, Dersnam Gostomon Thull, strode into the room.  The staff rose from their chairs.  Nyav did so too.   
    Lahaz began, "Sponndar D-G-T, we thought to cater..."   
    "Just as well," said the grandee, sighing with fatigue; "it's all we'll get tonight.  We haven't much time; I'll just sit with you people here.  Glad you've been looked after, Daon Nyav."  Three extra chairs were hurriedly dragged into place: one for Dersnam, another for his wife Saronna who had followed him in, and one for a third figure, whom Nyav did not immediately recognize.  While plates and dishes were being slid towards them across the tabletop, Nyav saw Dersnam quietly adjust the setting of his wrist-transceiver in the manner of one who expects a call.  Meanwhile - "Don't let me interrupt your tale, Daon Nyav," and the grandee reached for a klast to munch.
    Nyav decided to confess what he had carried with him across the wilderness.  He told them about the crystal of frozen thought, the message which he was duty bound to place in the Sunnoad's hands; he explained that it was from the Olhoavan Ghepion, Dynoom, its purpose to implore the Sunnoad to mount a rescue expedition to deliver the Starside city from a tyrant who, if he were not stopped, would eventually pose a threat to the entire world.     
    While saying all this Nyav was quietly pleased to note that the inner stirrings of his Neville Yeadon ego were muted now.  No more whisperings that he might be giving too much away...  All that remained of admonition from the Earthmind were the vaguest rumbles of doubt, hardly amounting to protest, and due most likely to some sly Terran urge, some ingrained tendency to befuddle friends as well as enemies.  Nyav could dismiss all that.  Firmly in charge of his own head, he believed he was right to spread the message of the threat posed by Dempelath; this mission was too important for secrecy, and so the more people knew of it the better.  And as he sensed with what appreciation his words were received, contentment and gratitude stole over him.  The flavour of this evening was his first real taste of the greatness of Syoom.  Surely the madness of Olhoav could never take hold here.  No revolutionary nonsense could pit backgrounders against foregrounders to spoil the humane equilibrium which he could sense around this table where, despite the astonishment he had caused, the atmosphere remained amiable and easy-going.  The questions these folk asked him were eagerly but never too insistently put.  Here were cultured folk, who knew as well as he that the price of survival on Ooranye was an acceptance of mystery.     
    He was thus able, finally, to disburden himself of his experience in Zyperan. 
    This was the greatest challenge and the greatest relief.  Inevitably he had to say something to explain the peculiarly filthy state of his skimmer on arrival.  Out of respect for his hosts he stuck to the truth, or as much of it as he himself could understand.  The atmosphere tingled at his words.  This time there were no questions; an awed silence fell when he finished. 
    Peace descended on his own mind also - such was the contrast between the hell in his memory and the dignified kindness of his new hosts.  Even the distrustful Terran dregs of his brain absorbed his favourable first impression of Syoom.     
    One grumpy warning remained to be whispered by the Neville Yeadon persona, the Earthmind:  watch it, hero! - a comment on the responsibilities that might accrue if he were landed with hero-status.     
    Nyav shifted uncomfortably in his chair.  True, a triumph is apt to propel the triumpher forward, to boot him into new zones of peril.  People expect much of a hero.  The pressure is apt to mount.   
    Still, surely Syoom was already furnished with heroes enough!  No need for him to add to their number.  Meanwhile, it had been such a relief to share the story!  The memory of Zyperan would never leave him but... a mound of horror slumps as it spreads.   
    ...He heard a radio-beep.  Then he saw Dersnam Gostomon speak to his upheld wrist: "All right, we'll arrive as soon as we can."   
    The grandee's eyes then flashed across the table at Nyav.   
    "A bit more travel for you this evening, Daon N-Y."   
    "Certainly, sponndar.  Wherever you like."   
    A thin smile of approval.  "Good; let's go."  Dersnam stood.  "Down, Glifoong," he said to the ranna as it leaped at him.  "I expect to be back before morningshine."   
    The animal seemed to understand its master's words.  Reassured, it went back to crouch on its rug.   
    The inner Yeadon voice, by contrast, tried to disturb Nyav's mood with a patter of unease:  I don't like this, it's too sudden, what are we suddenly going out for...   
    Accompanied by a group of attendants, they were walking down a corridor towards the skimmer sheds when Dersnam disclosed to Nyav: "One good way of finding your way around Ao is to start at the palace; well, that's where we've been invited."   
    "By the Noad, I assume."   
    "Actually, no.  Not this time.  You and I have been summoned by the Bostanga Fom."   
    Whatever that meant, a summons at this juncture had a reasonable ring, thought Nyav, given the importance of the message I bear...  and why should I not happily devour the thrill of a night flight to Ao?  I can, and I should, stay glad of the privilege of having reached Syoom alive, and to that heap of gratitude I must add extra thankfulness for having earned, by my equable response to the mysterious summons, Dersnam's approval...   
    For the grandee was eyeing him with a certain respect, saying, as they drew their skimmers from the shed, "You don't know what the Bostanga Fom are, I suppose."    
    The 'Spontaneous Guard'....  "No, you're right, I have never heard of them."   
    "So their repute can't have reached Olhoav."   
    Nyav remarked, "The only Syoomean institutions of which I have heard are those sufficiently famous and long-lasting to appear in ancient histories."   
    Dersnam chuckled,  "Your lack of unease, if nothing else, proves you are from where you say you are."   
    They mounted their skimmers, while the attendants waited in the dimness as they slid out of the building so as to close the doors behind them.     
    At this point Nyav became aware that a third rider was accompanying Dersnam and himself.  It was... the memory came back... Tem Talfarn: that wiry little fellow who had been his fellow-prisoner, lying bound at the mercy of Grilk Sedond's gang... Tem Talfarn, whom the gang had chaffed playfully before electing him Hostile Voice... devil's advocate... for some unguessable purpose.   
    What had that all been about?  A sardonic Terran thought floated up: Put it in your 'in' tray and leave it for later.  Or shove it in a file marked 'miscellaneous'; then you'll never have to deal with it at all.    
    His higher, Uranian self shrugged: be as impertinent as you like, Yeadon; my aim is to steer, not classify.  Living in the present moment, I accelerate through the night air towards Ao, a city I don't know, in the company of people I don't know -      
    But shouldn't you even try to guess about this Devil's Advocate stuff?    
    No, he replied, and asserted, and willed - quaffing these moments like aperitifs.

9

Elation at the metropolis rising ahead!  A bauble of resplendent hues  - how brandished against the night sky!      
    Or rather (the horizon hoisting the stem-plus-platform into full view) a whole tray of baubles held proudly aloft.   
    It was the classic mix of globular palaces, branching walkways and helical towers, the architectural brew characteristic of the twenty-five great disc-on-stem cities of Syoom. 
    He'd soon be 'in the drink of it' - to use an Olhoavan idiom that flicked him back to his Starside past.  Ah, poor mounded Olhoav which he had thought so great.  Affectionately and a trifle sadly, he reflected on the contrast between that ground-level outpost and this upraised hub of beauty and power named Ao.   
    His accompanying group of night travellers weren't the only skimmers headed there.  Scattered pinpoints of other lights crawled across the view.  Folk were arriving from many directions.   
    Dersnam turned his head to Nyav.   
    "I'm reducing speed because we're inside the twenty-mile limit.  Which means it's time we looked to join an ayash queue."    
    The ayash - the airstreams which lift skimmer traffic in three spaced fountains from the plain up onto the city's rim - Nyav had heard of them, and now he saw two, one close, one further, marked by the scores of glimmering specks which they were lifting high.  (The third airstream must be on the other side of Ao.)     
    "More traffic than usual," Dersnam remarked.  "And far more people going up than down.  Must be the Confluence."   
    "Confluence, sponndar?"   
    "I am certain it is, even though it's the first time in my life I've seen one.  We are only seeing it now because the Sunnoad was taken ill in my city." 
    Ask him what he means!  Don't let the moment slip!  the Yeadon under-voice popped back all of a sudden.  Didn't you catch that note of rancour? I bet you he's wistful about power.  Think of it: Dersnam Gostomon Thull, son of a Noad, is thereby forbidden by custom ever to rule, while here you are, a Daon, heir to the noadex of your city, something he can never be to his!     
    So? was Nyav's impatient retort to his Terran self.    |
    So, he could well be up to something.  And you need to prepare.  For example, by pumping him about this Confluence.  Find out what it is; learn swiftly so that you may outguess him when his plot becomes clear.    
    Oh shut up, Terran.  Allow me to enjoy these moments, please!  How can you expect me to jump to your conclusions on no evidence but the tone of a word?  Let me get used to this society; then and only then, after I have lived in Syoom for a while, I shall act upon my hunches, and maybe also on yours.      
    What makes you think you're going to have the time to play it that way? 
    I'm assured by the strength of the current I'm riding, the breadth of its flow, the trust I feel in the plunge I must make -    
    What plunge, idiot?    
    The plunge of faith.  That which accords with destiny's demands.    
    That means nothing to me.    
    It wouldn't, would it?  So shut up, Terran. 
...Skimmers in front of them were swerving to take their places in a queue, and Dersnam steered his group to align with them, so that the ayash updraught from the plain to the city rim soared straight ahead.
    You really think you're showing sense by not thinking ahead?    
    Oh perishing skies above, Yeadon.  Here, why don't you contemplate the ayash.  And the city's mighty stem.  Look!  Phosphorus Era technology!  The wonder of the world!  This is my first sight of it, and if you spoil this moment I'll ignore your voice henceforth.
    ...With the faintest of howls the air-fountain took hold of Nyav's skimmer, which trembled in the current, so that he gripped the steering-bar to keep his balance, but the need was not great, the vehicle's equilibrium was well maintained by the surrounding force, and he soon understood that all he had to do was enjoy the exhilaration of the invisible lift, higher and higher over the nighted plain.   
    The moment soon came when his ascent took him past the altitude of Ao's rim and the city's splendour smote him full in the face; scant seconds later he was carried above the floor-disc, which marked the point at which he felt he actually had entered Ao.     
    Not many moments more, and he and his companions had passed the apex of their flight and were descending towards the smooth metal of the oalm, the open space that runs around the periphery of all the great cities of Syoom.     
    Clang! - he was down. 
    Other clangs: Dersnam Gostomon and Tem Talfarn were also down.
    Nyav's eyes watered as he stared into the scintillant tracery that massed towards Ao's hub.  It was far brighter than Olhoav, even than pre-revolutionary Olhoav.  Here was the resplendent civilization of Syoom.

10

"We'll store our skimmers here," said Dersnam.  He had already stepped out of his.      
    Nyav emulated the grandee's next move, which was to float his skimmer some yards to a cubical bank of containers where it could be quickly and easily inserted.  The trio then set out on foot across the oalm, towards a radial avenue.   
    The far-travelled Olhoavan accepted everything he saw.  It was all a perfect fit with the legendary greatness he expected to see.  Around and above him loomed structures of a type partly familiar, though more magnificent than the examples he had known: the towers, the suspended globes and the interlaced walkways which festooned them.  Crisply unfamiliar, on the other hand, were the amazing street-sized "gems" of coloured air: these zones took the form of tilted parallelipipeds, insubstantial volumes through which a pedestrian had to pass.
    Dersnam noticed Nyav's amazement at the luminous air-stains.   
    "I guess," said the Aonian, "you're wondering about the rallegussou.  They form part of our system of addresses."  (Nyav proceeded to imagine how the system worked: how each trapezoidal rallegus might indicate an address via one of its faces or edges or corners.)  Dersnam continued, "They're a peculiarity of Ao dating from the Paramountcy.  In fact they're just about the only legacy that endures from that era - except (alas) maybe a certain smugness, for my fellow-citizens do rather like to look back to our moment of glory."   
    Just as they turned into a shorter, wider, busier concourse at right angles to the radial avenue they had been following, Nyav found that they faced, a hundred yards distant, the sharp end of their current air-glow's zone, where the turquoise air ceased exactly at the foot of a tower. 
    Dersnam gestured at a broad abutment and said, "There you see the entrance which we're going to use.  But stop a moment - look - "   
    Up till that moment Nyav had not paid so much attention to the people as to the city itself.  Suddenly he gained the impression that most of the population of the concourse were... not dancing exactly, but sidling, moving in arcs.   
    "They're still trying to win," Dersnam mysteriously remarked, "though they're late to the game."   
    "What game... ah," said Nyav, interrupting himself.  He had just noticed certain hand-and-finger signs by which game-partners selected and faced one another.  Each individual in each pair held what looked like a grey-glowing mirror, an oval with a handle.  He or she aimed it so that it shone into the face of the other person.  It flashed.  The other's flashed.  And the glow of one of the "mirrors" promptly died, after which the holder of the deadened thing took a step back, turned and ambled towards the edge of the concourse, where the other losers had likewise wended their way. 
    The winners, remaining alert in the central space, sought more challengers amongst their dwindling numbers.   
    Dersnam eyed Nyav and said, "I see you recognize this."   
    "By report only.  I've never seen one before.  In my remote part of the world a thuzolyr-election is a rarity, indispensable if and only if a Noad has died unexpectedly without any Daon available to succeed..."   
    "The same for us in Syoom," remarked the grandee.  "Only it must happen on a vaster scale when a Sunnoad dies.  Or, as in the present case, falls ill without having chosen a successor.  And since Arad Thastu 80436 happened to fall ill here...  well, you can imagine."   
    Nyav could now, without a doubt, grasp the meaning of "Confluence".     
    Like a giant soul-searching magnet the city of Ao, harbouring the dying Sunnoad, must draw from all over Syoom every person who even faintly wondered whether his or her own renl talent, measured by a thuzolyr, might perhaps, just perhaps, measure higher than that of the few million other contenders.   
    What could be seen in this concourse had to be a small sample of a myriad such encounters, each of them producing one local winner whose score was enhanced by the scores of the vanquished.   
    After another minute the middle of the concourse had emptied except for one figure, a fellow of about Nyav's age, who gazed about hesitantly before picking out where next to go.   
    Dersnam sighed.  "Here he comes.  I suppose I had better give him what he wants.  This will mean a short delay."  And to Nyav's tingling excitement the grandee drew a thuzolyr from his cloak and held it up, mirror-front foremost, to meet that of the approaching local winner.   
    Nyav had a view of the back of Dersnam's thuzolyr, and thus was able to read a fluorescent "181,387", which made him whistle under his breath: the number proclaimed that the owner had been proved to have stronger renl than 181,387 others, a figure impressive enough to set Nyav wondering whether Dersnam Gostomon Thull, barred though he was by strong custom from the noadex of Ao, might yet be fated to attain the one rank higher...   
    The concourse winner halted a yard from his opponent.  The two mirrors duelled.  Flash, flash, and then - the stranger's went dark, and Nyav saw the number on Dersnam's go up to 195,519.   
    The defeated stranger bowed, turned and walked off, preserving his dignity amid his disappointment.  Nyav, thinking there goes a man with a rich enough life that he can lose with aplomb, turned to congratulate his companion -    
    Dersnam's face, however, showed absolutely no appreciation of the boost to his score.  All it showed was a grim, eye-flickering wariness as the victorious grandee's glance swept the changing scene. 
    Seeing this, Nyav suppressed his congratulations and tried to match the other's alertness.  What stage had things reached?  Far fewer people were now visible in the concourse.  Most of the crowd seemed to have melted away into the adjacent streets.  A handful of those who remained were - he knew not quite how - unprepossessing, the way they slouched.           
    Suddenly it came to Nyav that it was all too easy to call this election business a game.  He could grasp, from the lesson of his home city's recent revolution, that peril might lurk in the swelling ranks of "losers".   
    He murmured a question: "Are the results accepted?"   
    "Normally."  Dersnam hesitated.  "Except for... (I suppose I'll have to tell you)... the Par Yentar."   
    ('Grievance Goad?')  "Is that an organization?"
    "No.  A phenomenon.  We don't enjoy talking about it.  Keep back!"  The abrupt command was reinforced by an arm-thrust to bar Nyav's way.  Dersnam himself had just taken a step forward; he nevertheless made sure he and his companions stepped no further.  The reason was not immediately obvious.
    "Ah, let's go on," urged Tem Talfarn from behind them.   
    Dersnam said, "That's what I want to do.  I'm not keen to keep the Bostanga Fom waiting.  But even less would I wish to have to tell them that I allowed harm to come to our guest here."   
    Nyav peered ahead.  "I don't mind walking past that lot," he insisted with reference to the surly slouchers.  "Compared with what I've been through..."
    "What you've been through," Dersnam retorted, "is exactly the point.  You're a messenger from Starside, the first in a very long time.  We don't want you wasted."   
    "I'm all for caution, sponndar, but," and Nyav moved as a determined instinct drove him forward, "caution is two-edged.  I'm wary of being stopped."  The words and the decision had their effect: Dersnam dropped his arm and followed the outlander. 
    (Not that the grandee really knew why he had let his judgement be overborne.  Often on our fate-swirled planet are things you might think except that your presentiments are erased by "not-yets": strong hunches which promise to come clear but not just yet - )   
    Now in front and to the left of his host and guide, Nyav was traversing the largely emptied concourse, walking past the closest of the sullen par yentar - when the tension exploded.

11

Some distance behind their backs, a sloucher underwent a spasm, thrashed about and clawed at a laser.  A bolt hissed through the air towards the trio of walkers.      
    Yet at the first blink of movement before the the firing stud had even been pressed, Nyav Yuhlm had responded.  Though he had as yet no experience of what the par yentar was all about, he was keyed up to read the tiniest reaction of other witnesses, with results as effective as if he had possessed eyes in the back of his head.     
    Laser technology on Ooranye employs vheic-light.  This travels not at the speed of photonic light but rather at the visible speed of a hurled spear; so, when the Daon of Olhoav spun round, drew and fired his own bolt so fast and true that it collided with that of the aggressor, friend and foe alive witnessed the candescence's deflection, and understood the stunning promptness and accuracy of the outlander's response.
    The remaining par yentar began to edge away.  Dersnam meanwhile eyed the Daon askance and murmured, "I have never seen anything like that."
    Nyav himself could have said the same.  He had long known that he was a good shot, but this was something more. 
    Then he saw more.   
    The bolt-on-bolt deflection had been so remarkable, it had at first obscured what followed it.  The finish of Nyav's shot.  A killing.   
    Pensive and subdued, he walked over to where the dead loser lay twisted on the city floor, and gazed at the man's commonplace features, at the mouth agape and the eyes staring blankly at futility.  The pitiful end of an inconsolable par yentar - someone who had not been able to bear the thought that his renl ability was inferior to another's.      
    Nyav felt that steps must be taken at this kind of moment to confront the moral risk which a winner must face.  One must colourize the killing - clad it somehow in the costume of epic.  Otherwise the thought of it was unbearable.
    Or - he wondered - was that just his Terran self talking?  Earthman Neville Yeadon had led a soft life.  He was likely to be squeamish about killing even when it was in self-defence.   
    Well, anyway, the necessary must be done.  All his life, Nyav had admired Syoom from afar, with a vision of its greatness, and now that he had reached it he would not hesitate to pay the price.  The very core of Uranian civilization was bound up with the majesty of the Sunnoad, which, in turn depended, at times like these, upon respect for the process of a thuzolyr-election.  Losers ought to be good losers.  He himself would be a good loser when and if his own turn came.  And so would Dersnam, and so would every decent person around here.  Doubtless the par yentar, poor flunnds, deserved pity, but their touchy egos could not be allowed to destroy the body politic.  So if they attacked merely because they were unable to bear being beaten, then they must be destroyed.  And notwithstanding any queasiness the momentum of one's own fate-stream was a force which one could not resist. 
    All the same, Nyav was profoundly affected by what he had done.  It took him back to the long-distant day when he had fought and killed Blos Nogar in the skimmer-park during the escape from Olhoav.  He must get more used to fighting: make it part of his psychological infrastructure.  Thus, a kind of roadwork deep in his mind kept him silent during the remainder of the walk to the Palace of the Noad.   
    "Here we are," finally muttered Dersnam.  The trio had reached an inlet or corner between two masive bracings in a wall of grey metal. 
    The wall was blurred with a close blanket or halo of purple light, and thus was rendered mostly featureless.  It had just a few enchased studs at eye-level.  In fact, in its entirety the Palace, at such close range, was not at all distinguishable.  Even from further off it had appeared vague, its form enveloped in the city's other structures like a boulder shrouded in jungle.  Probably, thought Nyav, this was not a main entrance but rather one of the building's extensions. 
    Dersnam presented his right eye to a wall-stud.  "And in we go," he declared as a section of wall slid upwards.   
    An  electric buzz zinged in Nyav's head as he stepped over the threshold, following Dersnam, and followed by Tem Talfarn.   
    Lit by its ceiling's fluorescence, a corridor brought them to an inner door which swung as they approached. 
    "Enter," said a voice that was soft and smooth as... velvet, whispered the Terran depths of Nyav's brain.    
    Dersnam turned his head as if to make sure of the obedience of his companions, and saw that Tem Talfarn was hanging a few paces back.  Mouthing his words at the smaller man, Dersnam said: "We're at the office of the Bostanga Fom.  Don't dawdle here."  

12

The woman, garbed in a suit of creamy softness, was seated at a circular transparent table.  Other chairs were spaced round it, but they were empty: the four men in the room were standing.  They were the background to the fragile mistress of this scene.      
    Attractive as an elderly faded flower, she was more self-possessed than anyone Nyav had ever seen on his travels.  Together with his companions he halted before her measured gaze.
    "I am Indan Orliss, head of the Bostanga Fom."  Her voice could have been used for a lullaby.  "One of us, so I have been told, has already met you, Nyav Yuhlm." 
    "I see that," Nyav replied, recognizing one of the two men on the woman's left as the 'gardener' on Dersnam's estate. 
    She went on: "And standing beside Zaktik Battebl is the Noad of Ao, Kmebb Somm, who has kindly lent us this venue."   
    The tall, stringy Noad grinned wryly and said, "One does not refuse Indan when she wants a room."   
    "And immediately on my right is none other than Brem Tormalla - "   
    The man she now indicated had a presence and a stance to match her own exceptional poise.  Heavily built like Dersnam, but with a wider and less intense, more reminiscent mien, he interrupted, "Ah, while I think of it - excuse me a moment, Indan - " and lifted a thuzolyr.  "Dersnam!"   
    "Yes," said the latter, "time we got it over."  He, likewise, held up his own mind-mirror...   
    A double flash-flash and then Dersnam's went dark.     
    Finished, one more election encounter. 
    Dersnam was now out of the running for the sunnoadex; no one showed any surprise.  The prevalent assumption appeared to be, that anyone who came up against Brem Tormalla in a renl-contest could expect to lose.  Nevertheless, though the bout had led to a foregone conclusion, it was more than a formality, given that it had boosted the winner's thuzolyr-score by the 181,387 points gained from his latest defeated opponent.   
    "Back to you, Indan," smiled the winner.   
    Indan Orliss, who had been obliged to tolerate the digression, now willed the threads of the meeting back into her grip.  She did this with a glance or two, while naming the fourth member of her panel, a youngish, sharp-featured man with deep-set eyes: "The agent on my far right is Meron Spett, my prime doubter.  Meron, do your work."   
    Meron Spett's lip curled:
    "Daon Nyav Yuhlm of Olhoav, as you claim to be..."   
    The implied hostility would have jolted Nyav more, were it not for a bonus from recent guilt: his killing of the par yentar now steadied him like ballast, encouraging him to accept further trouble as a kind of expiation.    
    "...tell us why you have come here," the man was saying.   
    "To convey a recorded message to the Sunnoad," replied Nyav, wonderfully relieved at being able to say this in front of a central authority at last.  
    "Who is the sender?"   
    "A Ghepion known as Dynoom, the city-Brain of Olhoav."   
    "You have the message on your person?"   
    Nyav drew from his cloak the orange crystal which he had brought across half a world.     
    "Ah..." said Meron Spett.  He made no move to touch the glowing jewel.  His reserve was understandable: not lightly to be fingered was the congelation of thought, the acme of Uranian craft.  "The gist of the message - can you tell us that?"
    "An appeal for help.  I cannot well say more." 
    "That may be.  And now tell us," glared Meron Spett, "how you survived crossing the more than eighteen thousand miles that lie between our city and yours."   
    Of course it had to be asked.  They could not simply trust any messenger out of Fyaym.  This was where a thickening sense of danger clouded the Olhoavan's brain, as he faced the task of telling his story.  Part of the problem was the sheer difficulty of narrating his experiences inside Zyperan.  How to capture a nightmare in words?  He would not even try to do justice to that - yet felt he had no choice but to narrate something of the climax of his voyage.  Perhap he was thus compelled by the sudden great hope that if he told it all now, he would not have to tell it ever again.  He would never be better placed than here and now, to "come clean".  Yes, he must tell, and so he told, with banal concision, with bare nameless descriptions, the bare bones of the episode, leaving it to Meron Spett to draw him out, to insist that he expand upon this or that sketch...  and as the session proceeded, the more inadequate his account sounded to himself, and the sweatier and hoarser he became, the more spellbound his audience was held.  They believed him!  He could tell!  His floundering sincerity convinced them, and besides they caught the idea that if ever the death of Zyperan were to happen, this is the way it would happen and thus indeed it had happened.  Even the sour Meron Spett seemed awed.   
    One hurdle remained for Nyav.  The questions eventually began to focus upon his arrival in Syoom, and for this he spoke more warily than ever, judging that the pitfall in this interrogation would lie in the fact that he'd been among conspirators when Dersnam found him; a circumstance which, he guessed, would look bad to the Bostanga Fom.  So he hastened to point out that he'd been the captive, and not the accomplice, of the "Dex Galooga".     
    "They may have thought to bag me as a curiosity," he commented, deciding that he had better put on record that he knew nothing of any plan that Grilk Sedond and his gang might have had for using him.  "After all, a survivor out of Fyaym has rarity value, I dare say."
    In other words, I can have had no relevance to any plot of theirs.  Get that, Indan Orliss?
    Her quiet eyes were on him unreadably.
    "Confirm, please, whether you heard aught of the thuzolyr-election."
    Nyav quoted:  "Oreneg Vadon 'MUST win'."
    "And what does that mean to you?" - more pointedly than ever.
    "I suspect that they support the election of someone of that name to the sunnoadex."  It was a guess, and, he felt, a good one.   
    "But you had not previously heard of this person."   
    "Naturally not," said Nyav.  "I had only just arrived from the other side of the world."   
    "All right, I can see you are telling the truth."  Turning her thoughtful gaze upon the thuzolyr-winner, who now seemed distinctly uneasy, Indan Orliss asked him:  "What do you make of this, Sponndar Brem?"   
    "It would seem absurd," huffed Brem Tormalla, wiping his brow and looking embarrassed.  "Oreneg Vadon is by all accounts a good man.  If he were not, he would not have got far enough to be my main rival.  In fact, if at some stage he and I meet in fair contest, he may beat me.  It's what we're waiting to find out."   
    "Thus you asseverate," said the head of the Bostanga Fom in her most official voice, "that you do not distrust Oreneg Vadon?"
    Brem Tormalla, evidently determined to pick his own words, shook his head.  "If he... but no.  I can't believe he could be a traitor to Syoom.  I respect him enormously."   
    "What does our outsider conclude?" the woman asked as she turned her deep gaze back upon Nyav.    
    She will not be denied, realized the hapless Daon, who wished the meeting would end.  He rummaged among memories of his brief time as a captive of Grilk Sedond's gang.  The memories were mere billowing murk with a phrase or two that flickered therein.  Fortunately he was able to recall and quote one aloud:   
    "'The process MUST be fixed...'"
    Immediately the atmosphere sizzled.  "Ah!" said more than one voice, and Brem Tormalla commented, "Are you sure you heard that?  How could anyone 'fix' an election?"    
    "Any ideas, anyone?" asked Indan Orliss, her eyes sweeping the room.   
    Noad Kmebb Somm coughed, "Well, it must refer to some particular current of destiny, the only power that can 'fix' things..."
    Nobody had anything to add to that.  The woman's unfathomable gaze came to rest again upon Nyav Yuhlm.  He experienced the pressure of her will.  It was soft and firm like the probing fingers of a spiritual surgeon pulling to extract the surplus ego.   while gently pushing down to suppress his opinions, his options; He sensed the recumbency of his own will as it relaxed into acceptance and trust.  But then came a bounce of protest from deeper inside him - his pesky Terran self seeking attention at just the wrong moment!  Should he listen?  Ah, flunnd, he might as well.  Just allow a thought or two to surface: you naive fools, of course you can fix an election, it's done all the time on Earth.    
    No, thought Nyav, this isn't what I need to hear right now.     
    He willed a message back down to the Terran basement: Do you want to get us in bad when we've hardly started our life here?  Be quiet, for goodness' sake.  Slam.  Quiet reigns. 
    And just then he brightly remembered, after all, something he could safely say to this gathering: certain details about his captivity among the Dex Galooga which concerned someone else - someone who was with him in this room...

13

Losing no time in speaking out, he said: "Sponndar Indan, it was Tem Talfarn, my fellow-captive, who was chosen by the conspirators as their permitted 'Hostile Voice', challenged to pick holes in their plan."    
    That re-directed her attention!  "Sponndar Tem," said Indan Orliss in a voice gone husky, "why did we not hear this from your own lips?"   
    Talfarn appeared unafraid. 
    "I was in no hurry.  I knew you'd get around to me eventually."   
    She nodded, "We have got round to you now.  So tell us.  What you were doing among the Dex Galooga?"   
    "Pursuing my own interest."   
    "I hear you're addicted to treasure-hunting."
    Tem Talfarn began to chatter, "Yes, it promised to be a grand expedition.  I had thoughts for nothing else.  For example I found a real good plennost ['re-setter'], and guess what, the Galooga fools let me keep it; they don't know good stuff from bad - "   
    "All right, never mind your urge to comb the rubbish of aeons.  What were they - the Galooga - after?"   
    "How should I know?"
    "The question is reasonable.  You were with them for a while."
    "Are you, by any chance, wondering whether they were looking for some gadget to fix elections?"   
    "It is not altogether improbable."   
    "Hmm!" said Tem Talfarn.  "Some means of magnifying one's preferred candidate into the greatest renl genius in history... that's what you're afraid of?  Really?" he added to make the idea sound ridiculous. 
    "When you put it that way," smiled Indan Orliss, "it does sound somewhat far-fetched."
    The others in the room caught the mood.  Talfarn's scoffing tone was lessening their mistrust of him.  He was just a treasure-hunter, whose selfishness was so plain and narrow, it seemed unlikely that he would be interested in the wider temptations of treason.     
    (Nyav kicked this pacakge of thought down into the basement of his mind as if to say: have a look at that, Terran; see, another worry dissolved.)   
    The interrogation shifted its focus to Dersnam Gostonom Thull.   
    "Sponndar D-G-T, were you on regular patrol when you came upon Grilk Sedond's gang?"   
    "More or less," he replied.  "I had some discretion - given the unrest caused by the Confluence - to cover what routes I saw fit."    
    "Which ought to remind us all," said Indan Orliss, "that our habits and plans must grow more flexible than ever during these last days of a dying Sunnoad."  Her attention swerved back to Nyav.  "Messenger from Starside, you who bear tidings for her: do you expect to see her?"   
    Caught out by the sudden question Nyav shook his head in what turned out to be a fortunate reflex.  "No, sponndar, I do not expect that, given that she is dying."   
    "Nevertheless, since you came all the way from Olhoav to deliver your crystal to Sunnoad Arad Thastu 80436 - "     
    While speaking these words the director of the Bostanga Fom began to rise from her chair; Nyav's nerves tingled as the pace of events quickened.  "Allow me," the Noad of Ao, Kmebb Somm, suavely moved to lead the way, and opened a door which led deeper into the building. 
    A phosphorescent winding stair glimmered beyond.  It was about to happen - an approach to the presence of the Noad of Noads!  Nyav Yuhlm commanded himself to unfreeze.  Kmebb Somm went up the stair first, the others all followed, Nyav in the midst of them, saturated with the honour that was being done him yet at the same time vexed by renewed agitation from his buried Terran persona.  Will - you - stop - yammering, he thought at it, but the spate would not dry up, and he had no choice but to allow it to coalesce:  O Uranian me, I have something to "yammer" about.  While you were telling the Bostanga Fom all about "your" journey through Fyaym and "your" victory over Zyperan, you seem to have forgotten that it was I who was in the driving seat at the time: I, Neville Yeadon, was on top during that journey; and though that's a fact which you appear to have forgotten, yet it must have coloured your account of events, sufficiently so, that I would be very surprised indeed if Indan Orliss has not divined the truth; yes, she knows, man!  She knows about our dual personality!  I bet you our lives on it!  She has grasped that you - we - are part Terran.    
    To which Nyav's mind replied with an outburst of clarity:  Dynoom will have told her anyway, in his message in the crystal.  And it's a good thing if she does know.  In fact the more she can read me the better, for then the more she'll know I'm telling the truth about everything.  Which is by far the safer way!  I definitely should not care to be distrusted by the Bostanga Fom.  And now, shush, for heaven's sake.    
    Glimmering at the top of the stair, a pale corridor became marked by the soft slide of a door.  The room thus revealed contained figures on watch around a bed.  The Noad filed in, followed by Indan Orliss, Nyav Yuhlm and the others.   
    Amid hushed breathing, Nyav for several heartbeats saw nothing but the elderly face on the pillow, next to the golden cloak folded on a bedside chair.  He forgot who he himself was; far less could he spare thoughts for the rest of the company.
    The breast of the eighty thousand four hundred and thirty-sixth Sunnoad of Syoom rose and fell almost imperceptibly.  Her lips were a fraction parted.  Her greyish curls shimmered faintly like an incipient halo; Nyav could sense the closeness of death.  But he did not yet know enough to be sure that Arad Thastu 80436 would never speak again.   
    He held up the message-jewel and began to whisper to anyone who might listen, "Is it permissible for me to leave this here for Sunnoad A-T, in case...?"   
    Brem Tormalla shook his head.  "She has the sreddesh.  She will not wake."
    The Deletion Malady, as notorious as the equally rare Sixty-Day Disease that had claimed Barlayn Lamiroth, was known to be ineluctable and final, and to allow no remission once it had taken hold.  Arad Thastu, therefore, would never wake.
    "In that case," reflected Nyav out loud, as he became aware of expectant looks directed at himself - and thanked his stars that he had plenty of witnesses - "my instructions do not cover the situation.  Syoom effectively has no Sunnoad right now.  I reckon I could use my common sense and leave the crystal in the care of the Bostanga Fom."    
    Are you mad? trickled the basement voice yet again.  How can you trust a self-proclaimed "Spontaneous Guard" that much?     
    Oh dry up Terran, he projected back; ever since I got here I've had foreboding after foreboding, until I realize that it's not about a genuine outside danger, it's you, inside me, you going on as if this were Earth, as if the people here were Earth-types, out for power.  Once and for all, will you pipe down!  There's nothing in the message-crystal that says it is for the eyes of a Sunnoad only.  Others may receive it on the way.  I have had a taste of it myself.
    Out loud he continued, "And so, will you take this, sponndar Indan Orliss?"  He held out the crystal while the import of his words lingered uneasily in his own mind.  Despite his put-down of the Terran inner voice, qualms were inevitable, whatever he did.   
    "Very well."  The head of the Bostanga Fom put her hand out and Nyav moved towards her, understanding that she would not take the crystal unless he dropped it into her palm. 
    This done, he stepped back.  Not taking his eyes off her, he - and everyone else present except the unconscious Sunnoad - watched as she tried it out, putting Dynoom's message to her forehead.   
    The smoothness of that forehead became creased; the pleasant cheeks went concave, the jaw chomped with distress while the eyelids squeezed hard...   
    I wonder, thought Nyav, if my face looked like that when I listened to the thing.  Anyhow... she's able to endure it; she's not dropping the jewel.
    The face of Indan Orliss, after more tense seconds, relaxed in grim exhaustion.  She brought down the jewel and her eyes opened.   
    "This is more than a call for help from one Starside city," she announced.  "This has a bearing on the security of the world."   
    Nyav said, "I'm glad you know it."   
    "Daon Nyav, you were right to give me this.  And now... I am right to give it back to you."   
    "Ugh?"
    "Take it back!"  Imperiously she held out the crystal.  He gulped, obeyed - but protested:    
    "It is not safe with me!  Anything could happen to me!  Dersnam and I were attacked on the way here!"   
    Indan Orliss turned her head to invite comment from Dersnam.   
    The grandee muttered, "I wouldn't say he's all that vulnerable.  I doubt if anyone could beat him at sponnd-play."   
    "Well," nodded Indan, "to me that is unsurprising.  Keep the message on you, Nyav Yuhlm - Neville Yeadon - man of two worlds."
    At these words, uttered so plainly out loud, the Olhoavan went rigid.
    "Yes," continued the chief of the Bostanga Fom, "Yes, the crystal has fortunately told me what it is my business to know."  Her voice gathered power, addressing the room: "Sponndarou, look well at this traveller.  He is not only from Starside.  Millions of miles apart are the two lives of this man, whose soul is an amalgam of Uranian and Terran.  It is all true," she emphasized amid the astonishment on the faces around her.  "We must pin many hopes on him.  We must allow him much!"   
    Nyav then plucked up the courage to say:   
    "Indan Orliss, the way you just spoke indicates that you haven't really given the crystal back to me at all; though I happen to be holding it, you remain, as the Terrans would say, the boss of this show.  So here you are - " he held it out again - "make it official, and take it back!  It's pointless and crazy for me to keep it; I don't want it any more.  I want to give it to you - or at any rate to the Bostanga Fom generally."   
    "A way exists," she said softly, "to do both."   
    Too late, he began to glimpse what he had set in motion.  As she spoke on, she caused his heart to sink.   
    "You can give not only the message but yourself to the Bostanga Fom.  You obviously ride a mighty current of fate.  We need you.  You, in return, can attain at one leap a central status in the body politic of Syoom.  Not for nothing, surely, did the Brain of Olhoav reach across space to bring your Terran self to Ooranye.  Not for nothing did you rise to the dayonnad of Olhoav.  Nor was it for nothing that nobody else but you was chosen to take a vital message to Syoom, and that you conquered the monster of Zyperan on the way here.  Yes, you've left a trail of evidence!  I predict with ease, that you are on the way to being a legend of Syoom.  I therefore call upon you now in your Terran surname: join us, 'Yadon'."    
    Slightly mispronouncing Yeadon, thought Nyav, but no point in saying so.      Well, here he was, caught in the mill-race of this woman's personal power, the vortex of her determination that "Yadon" be a pillar of the Bostanga Fom.  Only - he shook his head - he wasn't going to stand for his fate being merged with that of her organization.  He would not be mapped out in this way.    
    "Brem Tormalla!" he addressed the only person in the room who seemed not to be under the sway of the Indan Orliss persona.   
    "Yes, Daon N-Y?" the thuzolyr-wielder said amiably.   
    "Sponndar, my guess is that you are most likely to be the next Sunnoad."    
    "Either myself," Brem nodded, "or Oreneg Vadon."   
    "But the latter is nowhere in the vinicity, right?"   
    "He was in Juxxt, last time I heard.  Right now he must still be thousands of miles away, gathering points as he follows the Confluence here."   
    "Well then, if, when he gets here, he defeats you, give this to him; otherwise you keep it," finished Nyav bluntly, handing the crystal over.  "And take this, too," he added - to his own surprise and sudden elation - as he unclipped another object from his belt.  No longer would he carry the baffling pistol-shaped "stupp" he'd had on him ever since he'd snatched it during his failed raid on the Husnuth research-complex back in Olhoav!  Unwanted baggage, the Terran phrase came to him.  I'll travel light henceforth.  Thus determinedly relinquishing both items - not only the message-crystal from Dynoom but the artefact stolen from Dempelath - and leaving them in the hands of Brem Tormalla, the Daon of Olhoav stalked out of the room with the parting shot, "Thanks by the way, sponndar Brem Tormalla, for not calling me 'Yadon'."     
    Nobody stopped him.  No words followed him, no rebuke for the discourtesy or the rebellion, whichever it might be.  It was as though they understood him better than he did himself; understood and were not surprised at all by his sudden urge for freedom.  Well, if they were right, and the current of destiny had him in its grip, time would tell - and meanwhile you've earned a breather, said the voice below.

14

Living in the moment, Nyav lounged on a knoll, resting his gaze upon the downward view over leafy lawns and the diffused throngs of central Ao. The bright air of ayshine gave him and the thousands of other outdoors folk a terraced vista of pools, parks and an ice-racecourse, dotted with stepped truncated pyramids crowned with ornamental trees.  One special structure, its spires level with his chin, he knew to be the Noad's Palace, the Jarntz, facing him across the sculpted vale.  Far above all, almost directly above his head, extended the webbed platforms of the skyship docks.    
    He could admire it all dispassionately.  He had done his duty and he was a free man.  And so far as he could tell, nobody was arguing against this view.  The authorities had allowed him to divest himself of the gages of his former responsibility, so that he might start a new life in Syoom; purely as a spectator, therefore, he could enjoy this day of festal excitement, with the Confluence in full swing.
    Good-humouredly he had agreed to take his busy host's two young daughters to these public Tiered Gardens.  The girls were hoping that they might witness the arrival of Oreneg Vadon, the mysterious candidate so far unbeaten at the thuzolyr. 
    Oreneg Vadon being the one remaining serious rival to Brem Tormalla, the pulse-beat of popular interest pounded close to maximum; the girls, worked up to a pitch of exuberance, repeatedly performed cartwheels and hand-stands on the sloping grass.  Even when on occasion they paused in their gymnastics they continued to project their bubbling energy by the whirling vigilance of their glances and the questions they threw at Nyav.  "Look! look!" they cried whenever they saw a notable figure striding near, or when another skyship came floating towards the docks, or when the flash of a late thuzolyr-bout roused in them the question: "Could that be the Candidate?"
    Candidate.  They pronounced that in English.  It was the bit of English taught them by Nyav; he'd done that for the thrill it gave them.  News of his dual nature had begun to spread, and the girls loved to get him to talk about the mysterious Third Planet; his attempted descriptions fascinated them despite (or because of) how little they could grasp their meaning.   
    "We're so glad you chose to stay with us, Yadon!" chirped little Kyteth - echoing the name by which their father had begun to address the Olhoavan.
    Yadon...  Explorer-hero from Starside... sharing his soul with a mind from Earth...  For youngsters, what a treat to have a guest like that!  What a further treat to be taken on an outing by him!  He, the Daon of a long-lost outpost, could think of himself as some kind of wandering uncle, the traverser of Fyaym and the slayer of the monster Zyperan.     
    His face fell at the thought that they viewed him like a member of the family.  "Listen a moment," he said. "If... if I have to go away sometime, without warning, will you understand?"   
    Alinvee looked a silent question at her younger sister Kyteth, who gulped bravely and said, "We will understand."   
    The elder girl added with a proud shrug, "You did right, Yadon, to confide in us...  I mean...  you're only reminding us that sooner or later, adventure must claim you once more, because..."
    "You still have big things to do," Kyteth finished her sister's sentence for her.  Brightened by that idea, she sprang once more into activity, turning somersaults.   
    "By the Skies, yes!" cried her elder sibling, somersaulting likewise and  landing on her feet with a "whoof" in front of Nyav.  The tousled child voiced an afterthought: "Anyhow, Yadon, I suppose you could stay with us until the expedition is organized..."   
    Nyav asked dizzily, "What 'expedition'?"   
    "The one to Starside, to rescue Olhoav."   
    Weakly chuckling, Nyav shook his head.  Was the contents of his special message now all over Ao?  Aloud he admitted, "I'm absolutely amazed at what you girls know."
    "And while you're still with us," Alinvee blithely went on, "you may as well learn from us what you can."   
    "Anything!" squeaked Kyteth, arms outflung in emphasis.  "You may ask us anything about life in Syoom!  It's the least we can do!"
     Suppressing a smile, Nyav realized how irresistible to them the opportunity must be to show off their knowledge to a much older person who was ignorant of so much of the everyday.   
    Come to think of it, better not dismiss the idea that he might learn from them...
    For instance, about the individual to whom he had entrusted Dynoom's message..   
    "All right then, girls," he said, "what can you tell me about Brem Tormalla?"   
    Alinvee pouted.  "A great man," she mused.  "Probably The Next."   
    Kyteth wrinkled her nose.  "Do you have to sound so certain?  It could yet turn out to be Oreneg Vadon!"
    "True, sister!" Alinvee brightened. "And 'Vadon' sounds very like vadoan ['searchlight'], after all!  And nobody knows how high his score might by now be!"
    Nyav said, "Let me check something with you two.  Alinvee, you just said: 'how high his score might be'.  Now, all this stuff about 'scores' confuses me a bit.    They're only measures of achievement, aren't they?  So they only suggest the likely future winners - right?  I mean, all that really matters when two thuzolyrs clash is the comparative renl talent at that moment of the two contenders.  That's to say, if Oreneg turns out to have the power in him, then it wouldn't matter if it were his very first bout and he were at zero: he can still, if he's good enough, beat Brem and don the golden cloak.  Right?"   
    Alinvee said, "I'm not sure."     
    "You mean," nodded Nyav, "you're not sure but that the thuzolyrs might have memories - which would mean that previous victories could be taken into account."
    Kyteth said, "You hear things..."   
    But it was soon clear they preferred to believe that even with the best record of wins, even with memory counting thoroughly on his side, Brem Tormalla could still find himself bested by Oreneg Vadon.     
    For it became evident, as the girls spouted details to Nyav, that while they respected Brem they didn't find him interesting.  Brem was from Pjourth, 7300 miles away, a well-known city in Syoom, whereas Oreneg was from Grard, 9300 miles away, still in Syoom but further towards the edge; moreover Grard had always been viewed as the odd one out of the great Twenty-Five disc-on-stem cities. 
    It was a rather beguiling statistic that no Grardesh had become Sunnoad since the Foam, over thirty eras ago.  Now, this new Grardesh candidate was young - actually younger than Nyav; barely into middle age... and had some dramatic Wayfaring adventures to his credit.
    In short, Nyav realized, Oreneg Vadon had a glamour which his rival lacked.   
    Still, what did it matter which of them won, Brem or Oreneg?  Brem Tormalla would either become the next Sunnoad, in which case the message from Dynoom was already in the right hands, or else Oreneg Vadon would beat him, in which case his defeated opponent would have no choice but dutifully to hand over the crystal: for the Bostanga Fom had witnessed the delivery of the message, and moreover had ensured that its gist - a warning and a plea for help - was disseminated amongst the people.  The unwisdom of even trying to suppress it must be obvious to all.  No scope existed for betrayal.   
    Perhaps, in view of all this, it was small wonder that the inner voice of Nyav's Terran self, having been proved so wrong in all the sinister warnings he'd tried to give, had now subsided into what seemed like a sulk. 
    Admittedly, the way Indan Orliss had appeared able to... how could one put this...  pronounce upon things, was rather unnerving.  But perhaps it's something we all do, thought Nyav vaguely.  It might all turn out fair, when Fate had balanced her books to show that we all enjoyed our own fair chance to steer...

15

After the children had chatted about the Candidates, they resumed their gymnastic whirls.  Nyav meanwhile he allowed his attention to rove further afield.    
    It was most fortunate that he had decided to daydream less, to pay more heed to the details of the moment, to focus his sight and hearing more sharply than before.
    Amid the swarms of colour, the flares of breeze-blown cloaks, the accents of Aoans and visiting foreigners, the bustle in and around the booths of vendors, the sliding ice-course racers... his interest was caught by the sight of a shortish, wiry man whom he recognized as Tem Talfarn.
    That pottering fellow-captive of the Dex Galooga conspirators was now sauntering among booths about fifty yards distant.
    Tem appeared to be engaged in some sort of 'sprucing-up'; in his right hand he gripped an instrument that looked vaguely like a small steam-iron.  (Equivalent, thought Nyav whimsically, of a shoe-shine on Earth.)  Presently the fellow was running the gadget over a cloak that swathed the patient owner, who stood like... yes, really, like someone having his shoes shined on Earth.   Tem Talfarn, the man who lived for combing the wilds of Fyaym, and whose great interest in life was the discovery of artefacts from previous epochs... what could he be up to around here?  What had he mentioned, recently, about a specific find?  A memory eluded Nyav.  It doubtless would surface when the moment was right.  He resumed his roving examination of the scene. 
    Providentially his eyes rested on a quivery cheeb bush, the closest large plant to where he sat.  What he then saw made him forget about Tem Talfarn.  Through its screen of dish-sized ovate leaves, Nyav's eye caught, just in time, a glimpse of two vague forms creeping closer.    
    The figures stooped - crouching?  Leaves parted for an instant to reveal a pair of young faces, a man's and a woman's.  Their desperate stares spoke of a craving to make one's mark by any means.  It was the brand of the poor losers suffering from election-shock - the par yentar.    
   Nyav sprang up in alarm.  He recognized the pair's lethal intention.  And here he was encumbered by the children in his care.  Paradoxically, the best thing he could do for Alinvee and Kyteth was not to think about them.  Instead he pinned all hope on the unusual speed of his own reactions.  He dived around the side of the bush, rolled and blasted at the attackers before they could press the studs on their weapons.  As had happened on previus occasions he profited from a fighting ability which seemed innate, not at all the result of training, nor much connected with the rest of his personality; and yet it was not quite like before.  More urgently than ever he preferred not to kill; I hate to let the children witness death dealt by me.    
    Nyav, chest heaving, laser pointed, stood and brooded at terrible might-have-beens while he waited for moments to tick by normally once more.  Thank the stars, he had not killed, this time.
    He heard the girls whisper behind him.  "Couple of runks!"  "Yay-don's disarmed them?"  "Skizza, yes!  Never saw anyone move so fast."  "What's he going to do now?"   
    What indeed, wondered Nyav.     
    He glanced this way and that.  No other bystander was within ten yards.  Some people must have witnessed what had happened, but they were letting him deal with it.     
    "Alinvee," he said, "pick up their sponnds for me, will you?"  His own sponnd never wavered as she collected the dropped lasers.  Then he stood over the sprawled would-be murderers:
    "Explain yourselves.  Who are you?  Why did you try to kill me?"   
    "You are a winner," the man said bitterly.   
    "I'm not even in the contest," retorted Nyav.
    The woman said, "Now you'll have to kill us.  We're par yentar.  I'm Thezmedet; this man with me is Lokol.  You say 'Explain' but there is nought to explain.  We teamed up in despair.  I sense you wish to spare our lives, and life is wonderful, but the despair will return if you let us go and then we'll only try again - so, kill us, please."   
    Nyav became aware that an audience had quietly gathered.  The circle of spectators were giving him yards of room.  They all sombrely watched and listened.     
    With a surge of impatience Nyav hollered at the par yentar, unthinkingly interlacing his diatribe with English words:   
    "RUBBISH!  I already killed one poor devil of your sort today.  I'm not killing any more.  Thezmedet and Lokol, you lost your hopes in the flash of a thuzolyr, but that doesn't make you failures - or rejects - no, on the contrary, you have been CHOSEN - by me!  You don't know it, but you've jumped on a bandwagon." 
    (What am I saying, he wondered, passing his hand over his brow.)   
    Lokol said, wonderingly, "You are...?"
    "I am Yadon, Daon of Olhoav, traverser of Fyaym, and so newly arrived in Syoom that I am moved to call upon assistance - specifically, yours."   
    "Your words are strange," said Lokol.
    "Naturally they must seem so at first."  Nyav ploughed on, "For starters, where are you from?"   
    "Innb."   
    "In precise terms - for I need to get around - tell me how you travelled here from Innb."   
    The woman, propped on one elbow, grimaced:  "All too fast!  Is this some sort of joke at our expense?  You, a backgrounder with just one name, claim to be a Daon, and reek of the exudation of potential victory whereas got nowhere?  Is that the jeering point?"
    "I have gone through more names than I care to remember.  I ask you a practical question because you are outsiders, as I am."     
    "To answer your question about how we got here," the young man said tiredly, "we got passage here from Innb when we signed on the Pumplon."   
    "A skyship?" 
    They nodded. 
    Pumplon... 'buffoon'.  Nyam mused aloud, "That's not its real name, I suppose."
    A very different voice behind his back said, "Actually, it is."

16

Dersnam Gostomon Thull was standing between his daughters with his hands resting on their shoulders; a threesome illustrating relaxed family harmony. 
    In the bland tone of one who alludes to general knowledge, and is quite unconcerned at a fight that had taken place within yards of his offspring, nor feels any inclination to insist upon the punishment of would-be assassins, Dersnam proceeded to explain about the vessel with the funny name:
    "The Great Triangle Fleet Patrol uses skyships from the regular fleets; Ao together with Vyanth and Skyyon each supply a hundred first-class ships.   But in addition the planners can at a moment's notice hire other vessels, including tramps [hreakna] like the Pumplon."
    Nyav felt as though he were slipping into a dream, a gentle sort of dream in which he was pleased and relieved but not particularly surprised, that his decision to spare Thezmedet and Lokol was likely to be upheld.
    Except, his Terran self was shocked. 
    The thought whistled from the basement of his two-storey mind: These potential killers are getting off scot free.    
    Well, yes.  On a world without bureaucracy or written laws, you learn that you're gaining your point when your skin feels the breath of the mood, and the faces around you express the mandate of conviction.  While riding this wave, thought Nyav, I'll need that couple whom I spared.  They have to get off scot free in order that they may show me how best to gain entry to the vagabond life.  Disappearing from the eye of officialdom, I must rove obscurely.     
    Nyav could not verbalize it, nor crisply think it, but he felt strongly that he he had been propelled too fast and far into the limelight.  His instinct was to disappear from the eye of officialdom, and to rove obscurely.  
    For example, the thought that he might be expected or be tempted to participate in the election, repelled him.  Unlike almost everybody else, he dared not obtain a thuzolyr.  Vaguely terrifying was the prospect of power, of being flung unspeakably aloft, thence to be left high and dry... Already he was being accorded an alarming degree of influence in a matter of life and death.  He must escape for a while, wander alone in Syoom, and get the measure of his true self.   
    Yet he could not just slink away, could he?  But yes, he must!  If he were to talk it over with anyone (except the girls, bless them, who seemed to understand) strong-willed people might convince him he ought to stay.  He felt in his bones that this would be sure to happen.  Such hunches were slippery and powerful, impossible to refute or ignore.  Look at Dersnam, look at that poise.  If I tried for long to hide my intentions from him, the calm flicker of those steering eyes would x-ray all my plans in a very short time...     
    Dersnam meanwhile was saying, "Sorry to have been so busy that I couldn't relieve you earlier."    
    "It was no trouble to take your girls here," Nyav politely assured him.   
    "Actually, they took you," Dersnam chuckled.  "Nothing could have kept them from this vantage-point; not since rumour has got around that their favourite, Oreneg Vadon, may arrive for his bout this evenshine."
    "Right here?"
    "It's possible, if Oreneg is coming by skyship from Grard..."   
    "Yes, all right, but," Nyav decided to be blunt, "it could mean more danger..."   
    "I was confident that you would protect the girls, as indeed you did," shrugged their father.  "Anyhow they couldn't be kept away from here, as I said before." 
    "That's mad!" cried Nyav.  "You could have locked them up!"   
    "Pointless!  Despite all the watchers and screens around my estate, do you think the runks - er, the par yentar - could not get through?"  Seeing the incredulous look on the Daon's face, Dersnam added: "Fortunately, this kind of excitement doesn't happen often.  Thuzolyr-elections are rarely needed.  But when they do happen we have to ignore the dangers."   
    Nyav's thoughts meandered: Dersnam's "fingers in six political pies" - the fellow's interests in vheic farming, food production, city maintenance, transport and fleet patrols, Wayfaring and history-telling - all may mean he gets used to neglecting the little ones; the fellow's such a seasoned statesman... what made me think of that phrase?  We don't have 'seasons' here.  Ahoy down there, Terran mind, are you waking up again?    
    Aloud, he admitted: "I suppose I can see where you're coming from..."   
    The grandee laughed his loudest.  "Terran phrases - I like them!"
    "Excuse me," said Nyav; "something needs sorting out, over that way."

 17

The subconscious Terran mind was now heaving at the basement trap door.  It was close to hammering in Nyav's brain.  Perforce he listened.  With every step he strode, heading in the direction of the wooden structure which was being used as a base by Tem Talfarn, the now open Terran voice sneered:  Look how the fellow, mountebank-style, has pitched his booth.  See, he's filled it with knick-knacks to look good.  It's about time that you Uranian fools realized that the thing is just a cover.  Your trouble is, you just can't imagine the fixing of an election!
    The upper mind, in response, asked wearily:  What are you talking about, Neville Yeadon?
    The re-setter.  The gadget Tel Talfarn discovered on his scavengings in Fyaym.  
    Ah, thought Nyav, should have taken better note when I heard mention of it before.  Is it too late now?   
    Carefully he noted what Tem Talfarn was doing.  The fellow was catering for a client at this very moment, running his re-setter over the client's cloak, burnishing the usual gear held in its pockets - the torch, the sponnd, the compass, the stylus.  A superficial, pleasant operation, to earn a few phial-credits by giving a shiny look to stuff that was heavily used.  Now the client was paying out a handful of coins.  Now, having received his payment, Talfarn turned his steps towards his booth.  He had finished one circuit, so he would juice up his gadget and prepare for another.   That's how it was suppposed to look, anyway.
    Nyav, unnoticed, followed him in.   
    He shut the flap behind him. 
    Talfarn turned and said, "Who - oh, it's you, Daon Nyav."   
    "You might as well call me Yadon. I'm not fighting it any more," smiled the Olhoavan, and drew his laser.  "Give me that."   
    "Are you mad?  Have you become a runk?"   
    "I'm not exactly a par yentar, no.  Rather the opposite, in fact.  Far from craving limelight, I want to go and get lost."   
    "Then do so, by all means!"   
    "First, though, I must earn that freedom.  The re-setter... hand it over."   
    "Why should you steal this from me?   What do you need it for?"   
    "I intend to destroy it."   
    Tem Talfarn paled but, being no match for the Daon, did as he was told.  Nyav - or Yadon - put the thing on the ground and promptly blasted it with a sponnd-bolt.
    The remains marred the grass with a hot puddle, at which Talfarn stared, repeating:  "But why?  But why?"   
    "I observed your route," Yadon explained.  "Your next round would take you to Brem Tormalla.  Quite soon.  He's not far away."     
    "And?" shrugged Talfarn.   
    "Your re-setter was going to do a lot more than it usually does, was it not, when it came to Brem's thuzolyr?"
    Talfarn was silent.
    Yadon continued:  "Whatever anyone may say, I say that thuzolyr-bouts do depend at least partly on the previous score.  And if Oreneg Vadon were to meet Brem Tormalla, and the latter's thuzolyr were previously to have been re-set to zero by your interference, well, that might do the job of the Dex Galooga quite nicely, eh?  Or rather, it might have.  It won't happen now."   
    Talfarn's eyes de-focused and his jaw hung slack.  Then he exhaled and said in a croaking voice, "Given that you believe this, Daon Nyav - Yadon - whoever you are - what will you do with me?"   
    Yadon started to back away, watchfully, without lowering his laser.
    "My guess is, you plotters are all from Grard or descended from Grardesh, and were addicted to ensuring that, in the person of Oreneg Vadon, there'd be a Grardesh Sunnoad at long last.  Skimmjard, Tem Talfarn."  And as he spoke these words out loud, secretly he exulted, I have saved the election and in so doing I have earned my freedom.  And thank you, O Terran layer of my mind; just for once you have served me well.
    He picked up the flap and ducked out of the booth - and almost stumbled over Alinvee.  She looked at him with great round awe-filled eyes.   
    He stated, "You heard it all."   
    She nodded and her small voice said,  "I ran over here, worrying about you, Yadon."   
    His face cracked into a smile.  "You need worry no longer," he said and hugged her.  "This is my time to leave - like I said I would earlier, remember - but first I want to see you return to your father.  Go back to him.  Run!"   
    She understood, turned and ran back towards the figure of Dersnam, who was in conversation and facing elsewhere. 
    Yadon took his own way towards the clustered elevator towers...

18

...Tramping over the lofty webbing of Dock Five, as he headed towards the gangplank of the Pumplon, he called out: 
    "Skimmjard Thezmedet, skimmjard Lokol."   
    The two ex-par-yentar turned; their faces lit up.  They ran to greet him, pushing past other crew-members who were toiling into the skyship with kit on their backs.   
    The wind was strong up here; Thezmedet's long hair lashed her tear-glistened face.  "Yadon!  You!  The one who gave us 'runks' our lives back after we tried to kill you!"   
    "You told me of this escape route; that's payback enough," said Yadon.  "Come on, let's get inside, and while we're about it, tell me what we're doing and where we're going."   
    She trilled, she babbled: "We're not going to get rich, I can tell you that!This is basically a netter, you know - that it, I suppose you don't - a netter crew is one that nets evidencer-clouds [sigaklyana], or tries to."
    "Just assume I know nothing," Yadon said quietly, while they settled into the main crew-lounge with a score of other new arrivals.  The hiring of crew was on such a casual basis, he had no anxiety that their talk would be subject to any officious interruption.     
    "Evidencer-clouds are rare," remarked Lokol.  "Even more rarely are they useful.  Be that as it may, that's what we're going to do, working for ourselves, as soon as we've finished our hire schedule.  Until then - until we can set our own itinerary - we're on Patrol.  Our Captain, Jara Sekket, will see to it that we all keep to our contract: so, no matter what the election-excitement, we leave on time!"   
    "Suits me," muttered Yadon. 
    The throb of the skyship's engines began to drum through the floor.  They were off, and, hardly a minute after they had cleared Aoan airspace and floated out over the plains, Captain Jara Sekket herself - a cheerful, lithe woman dressed in engineer's overalls - came to sit by him for a welcoming chat with the new recruits.  Yadon had began to realize how informal was life aboard the Pumplon.  He took the opportunity to ask the Captain how her ship had come by its peculiar name; the tale was soon told:     
    "...Its first owner-investor found his friends telling him he was a fool.  Nobody earns enough to break even, they said, by hunting evidencer clouds; only a buffoon would hope to obtain a significant catch within a thousand days...  Well, the very first day out, he struck it rich, netting a cloud bearing the recorded image of a historic battle in the reign of Sunnoad Tu Rim 78860, no less; a fantastic find!  So, ironically, he called his ship the Buffoon..."
    Nyav laughed along with the others, and indeed felt in his bones that this trip would count as a pleasant interlude, but an interlude only.  He must disengage further.  For one thing, he would need to get away from the grateful pair, Thezmetet and Lokol.   He had cured them of being par yentar, by convincing them of their own worth; unfortunately in doing so, in getting them to pay heed, he had convinced them of his own importance; precisely the image he was trying to get away from.   
    Fortunately the world was wide...

19

A call for action galvanized the crew before the day was done.      
    "You've brought us luck, Yadon!" the captain called out as she clattered up towards the roof deck.  She and her netter crew all took for granted that he would follow; and he did.   
    On that kind of ship the roof deck unfolds and opens out, allowing the eight chief netters to raise the sceptre-shaped emberedd, which was the size of a small tree, and point it towards the belly of the cloud.  Yadon, the last to emerge onto the roof-deck, craned his neck and saw, weltering in the lower atmosphere, a purplish-stained nebulous mass. 
    This was no time for a beginner to interfere: he understood hardly anything of what was going on, only that the emberedd was to "net" the cloud.  He did not ask how; he was content to watch the experts at their work. 
    In promixity to its target the emberedd began to crackle out sparks of orange and purple, at first with nothing that could be called reticulation, but after some seconds the colours became filaments as the "net" was indeed induced in the cloud.  A subsonic pressure squashed against Yadon's ears; then came a colossal "pop" and a rapid alternation of lights -   
    It was over.  The cloud had begun to drift away, dumbly happy at the meaningless radiation it had received in exchange for the loss of its long significant load.   
    Jara Sekket led the cheering.  "We've hauled in a big one!" she cried with glee.  "Yadon, look at the size of it!"   
    "What is it about?" he asked.   
    "Give us a moment, we're about to find out..."  Working on deck while the wind blew their cloaks about them, the captain and some technicians lowered the emberedd, took down the sphere at its tip and gently placed the gelatinous haul in a box the size of a kitchen oven, with a glowing front screen that formed an image.
    Yadon heard gasps of awe.  He advanced to look, and he was given the space to see.  An image of a multitude of skimmers on a plain, and hover-rafts and laser bolts and fighting men lying scorched...   
    "Magnify it," murmured Jara Sekket.  "Go on, shift that..."   
    Someone turned the dial she meant.  Quite soon the picture showed such detail that they were able to read the names and insignia on some of the rafts.  The captain called for her historical experts.  They soon identified the captured scene as being from a battle in the reign of the enigmatically "heroid" Sunnoad Faran Taknoa 79892.  A terrific find.
    Expectant eyes turned to Yadon, as though he had brought this luck and might bring more.  His mouth shaped an uncomfortable grin.  What's all this, a kind of law of sticky attraction, ensuring that the fate-wave won't let me go?  It's not a game that suits me.  I'm still determined to get out.  Insidious, this spotlight of fame!  Not only some potential Sunnoad, be it Brem Tormalla or Oreneg Vadon, but any poor forg may get caught in the pitiless glare of history, where every mistake you make is illuminated for all time.  Therefore the way to escape is not to be a forg at all.  Be a backgrounder instead.  And if the fate-wave has uses for me, well, too bad - I shall jump ship the first chance I get. 
    Fate may not wish to let me go, but I'm letting it go!  
    Though as for being "Yadon", hmm, yes - Indan Orliss of the Bostanga Fom is getting something of what she wants, for, yes, I am "Yadon" now.     
    But on my own terms...

20

The two remaining serious Candidates encountered one another that day. 
    They met at the very spot where the crowds in the Tiered Gardens had hoped to see them meet.   
    For a short spell they stood quietly, face to face.   
    With gentle gravity the easy-going Brem Tormalla, with nothing in life left to prove, remained relaxed, alert as befitted the moment, yet serene in his trust in fate.       
    His opponent's stance was tenser.  Oreneg Vadon, like the other man, trusted - but with a hazier, long-term, merely distant hope in fate's final verdict, a blurred prospect that for the present he felt impelled to make crisper, hardening it with the unsparing, ruthless purpose which close observers could sense from the gleam in his eyes and the tautened skin stretched over his cheekbones. 
    For the sake of his city, Grard, he was prepared to improve upon the wave he rode.   
    Each candidate raised his arm; the thuzolyrs flashed; one held its light; the other faded.   
    Nobody spoke a word for a minute after Fate had given its almost instantaneous utterance.
    Then the top-ranking spectator, the Noad of Ao, stepped forward and spoke loudly to all within hearing:   
    "As you probably all know, Arad Thastu 80436 is still alive, but she shall never wake.  I, and the Bostanga Fom, deem it unnecessary to await her death before bestowing - this!" and he brandished the golden cloak, taken from the dying bedside of the old, and now former, Sunnoad.   
    Everyone who heard drew sponnd and aimed blades at the sky in spontaneous salute.   
    No small-mindedness was possible at a moment in which any breath taken must ping and trill with the air of history.  Oreneg Vadon stepped back and conceded graciously, "So it's yours, Sunnoad B-T."   
    Thereupon, when Brem Tormalla took off his old cloak and accepted the golden one and swirled it around his shoulders, no trouble-makers or nay-sayers objected; his action had crystallized the mandate of destiny.  The irregularity of his succession while his predecessor was still alive was a minor datum, merely a pedantic footnote to the day; for when it came to the point, all those present - all who were there because they were fated to be there - agreed that Syoom needed an effective Sunnoad more than an unconscious and moribund figure in that role.     
    And so the reign of the eighty thousand four hundred and thirty-seventh Sunnoad officially began during this second hour of evenshine on Day 10,543,613 of the Actinium Era.   
    Brem Tormalla 80437's first words were addressed to the man he had bested in the contest: "You've had a lucky escape, sponndar O-V."   
    "Perhaps not a permanent one," replied the Grardesh.   
    The new Sunnoad did not resent this.  Seeing how the other inclined his head as he spoke, Brem Tormalla took the remark as it was meant - a statement of fact, rather than one of breathtaking insolence; and besides, it could well have been inspired: Oreneg Vadon, in suggesting that the cloak could yet one day pass to him, might have been brushed by the shadow of the future.   
    Meanwhile, in the evening airglow, the throngs of spectators began to disperse, satisfied that their long wait had been rewarded.  They were privileged witnesses of an event for which the mightiest traditions of Syoom had conjured a tingling aura: one special chosen individual having been swathed with the greatness of the golden cloak, the sight of such enveloping responsibility filled folk with awe.  Whenever that garment was donned, nobody, not even little Alinvee and Kyteth, could imagine aught negative about the wearer.   
    Brem Tormalla meanwhile returned to his guest rooms in the Jarntz, where he began a series of meetings with the advisers who had been waiting to confer with the long-awaited successor to Arad Thastu 80436.   
    The Bostanga Fom were not present - they insisted upon working in the shadows - but the Noad of Ao, the Daon of Ao and the Noad of Innb conferred long with the new Sunnoad, who also insisted that Oreneg Vadon take part.   
    One eccentric interruption occurred in the serious business of the evening.   
    Dersnam Gostomon Thull, grandee of the estate of Aonstaggana, found it easy to gain admittance; eyebrows were raised, however, when he brought a girl-child into this august company.   
    "Sunnoad B-T," said Dersnam, "will you listen to what Alinvee has to say?"   
    "Indeed," replied Brem Tormalla with not too broad a smile.  Uranian culture respects the unexpected.
    Therefore they all listened while the wonderstruck girl found words to narrate the incident she had witnessed that involved Yadon the Olhoavan and Tem Talfarn.   
    When she had finished, all were shocked at the attempt to influence the election; some passionate voices were raised, to suggest that searches be made for the heroic Starsider who ought to be rewarded, and for the traitorous conspirator who ought to be punished.  "Talfarn can't have got far," said Oreneg Vadon.   
    The Sunnoad said to them all, "I understand your anger.  Despicable Talfarn, and the rest of this Dex Galooga, tried their best to compromise your honour.  If they had succeeded they'd have made a villain out of you, Oreneg, and would have cheated history for everyone.  But they failed.  We must keep that in mind.  That is all that matters."   
    Alinvee dared to pipe up:  "May it please you, Sunnoad B-T, one other thing also matters: to recognize the services of Yadon.  Only, we can't - he's away by skyship now!"   
    "Odd - for him to leave so abruptly.  Can you tell us why, girl?"   
    "He wanted, he needed to go, away in secret... and now we may never hear from him again," she choked.  "Gone by ship - but I bet that's only the start.  He really does want to disappear."       
    Grave expressions round the table were admissions of the truth, that it was all too easy to sink without trace in the anonymity of the plains.   
    Only the Sunnoad had no worries on that score:
    "Oh, we'll hear of him."

CONTINUED IN

Uranian Throne Episode 17:   

The Scared Logician