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"How long had you been ambassador before the operation?"

"Two and a half years."

"So it was at a time when the Viyato were on good terms with the Dagrov."

"Better than now."

That led him nowhere. Clark returned to the reader. A long letter in the file explained how brain implants worked. Maxwell had noted at the end, "Can be used only once." Another letter ordered the ambassador to get his wife to drop her lawsuit against him.

"How did you do it?" Clark asked.

"I told her lawyer that she and Paula would be killed."

"What did she do?"

"She took Paula off-planet."

"Why did she come back?"

"I don't know."

"Some go back, some are dragged back, some believe until the last minute that they're running in the opposite direction. Dig in your heels and stop your ears, it's the only way they can't use you," Clark quoted, glancing round.

Maxwell had gone back to his desk and was blinking in the sunlight beneath the wall of windows, his expression peculiarly mild and face bathed in perspiration. A gold band circled one finger. Was it a burial ring? "Paula," he said, nodding.

"Her last words, in fact."

There was no comment. Clark advanced the reader. "Two of our priests will be found murdered in the Outland. You will rouse Resheborian opinion against the Dagrov family...this came just before the general strike, didn't it?"

Maxwell remained silent.

"The union priests were Viyatos?"

"So it appears. Would you have guessed me a revolutionary?"

"You're an adaptable man," Clark said. He thought of asking whether it was the Viyato or Dagrov family who had murdered the priests, but decided he didn't care.

Marlow glanced at the index. Clark was halfway through the file.

"I don't see any indication that they were angry with you."

"Skip ahead. Entry 63."

Clark scanned forward. "Do not be fooled by Var's claims. We have the trigger mechanism to implant PM. We will not hesitate to use it," he read, together with a note explaining that Saroka Var had offered to sell Marlow the trigger, for a sum Clark guessed was near the ambassador's yearly salary. "Quite a price," he said.

"I paid it." Maxwell turned his head to look out the window, chin resting on the first knuckle of the left hand. Sweat fell like raindrops from the tips of his fingers. "I took the money to Saroka Var, who no longer had the trigger and was honest enough to tell me so. It had been stolen, as she put it, by an agent of the Ketry family. So--" His voice broke. Clark came to the desk to sit opposite him, trembling with the effort to pretend he was calm.

"So, I approached the Ketries. I was engaged in arranging the Dagrov family's exit to Reshebora then, and you may suppose I had not slept well for some weeks."

Clark imagined Maxwell bug-eyed like Tiyar.

"They insisted that, as a condition of sale, I have the Viyatos' contract to Paffir Haretz revoked. They would not allow me to see the trigger."

"So the Viyato might still have it."

"Perhaps, although by Var's account the Viyato had not had it for many years, but surrendered or sold it to Interplanetary Security."

"The police?"

Maxwell shrugged. "IS is a big organization. If they ever had it, they allowed the Viyato family to keep the title to it, so to speak. But to return to my story, I have no power to revoke Exclusive Trade patents and the Dagrov family was no longer in a position to do that either. I told them so, but they did not believe me, and there the matter rested."

Clark didn't believe him either. "You must have suggested another deal," he said.

The ambassador took some time to rearrange himself, placing his hands on the desk before him, moving tapes and papers around, clearing his throat. In the street, a woman shouted. Clark thought Maxwell had signalled his dapper secretary and was waiting for the man to appear.

As it turned out, the secretary missed the signal, distracted by another scene in the hallway. Before Maxwell finished straightening his cuffs, his wife burst into the room.

Paula's mother was astoundingly beautiful. Her long dark hair and black eyes, offset by a sunny tunic, reminded Clark of the Fiya paintings in shop windows. When she addressed her husband, speaking to the room at large because she could not see him through her tears, her low voice made the tapestries quiver.

"Stand up, you godless sniveling dog," she ordered, stepping closer. Her jaw seemed to move independently of her rigid features, and Clark noticed how awkwardly, almost stiffly, she moved. Slimmers must grip her tight under the bright clothing. The free fall of hair began at a cinch that yanked the roots in her scalp. She raised a long slender hand toward the window. Clark saw that she held a Puro.

Marlow Maxwell squeaked in fear. Isadora fired at the sound but missed. Clark stepped behind her, grabbed her wrist and took the weapon. She punched him so hard that he fell to the floor, but he kept the Puro close.

Clark stared at the rug. He saw there a pattern of lighter and darker shades so minutely different from one another that no one standing could have detected the variations. It was a lovely pattern. For the moment, Clark could see nothing else. Isadora's weight pressed down on his back. He heard someone run in.

Teresa daFlora lifted the weight from him. Clark stood up to see Maxwell twist his wife's arm with a practiced motion that forced her to her knees. When he let go, Isadora hugged her arms to her sides and bent her head, saying, "You are a murderer. I'm going to kill you and you can't stop me." She looked at Clark.

Now he understood why Paula had loved Sevit and why she loved him. What a surprise to discover people not predisposed to hate.

Isadora lunged past Teresa for the Puro in Clark's hand. Startled, he dropped it on the rug, then quickly put his foot on it. She kicked him in the ankle, diving as his leg jerked up. His knee caught her square in the chest. Grabbing the weapon, he staggered away to empty the chamber while she lay gasping for air.

"But I want to kill him," Isadora coughed out, sitting up crosslegged. Her lack of dignity seemed habitual, not due to grief. Real mourning appeared nowhere in her speech or expression. All that was sealed off, like the closed wing of the Uchide house, too expensive to keep and too close to the root to destroy, so the worm of anguish ate her reason instead. She was crazy. But then, so was Marlow.

Seeing that Clark and Teresa would protect him, the ambassador had gone back to his desk by the window and sat down. He was perspiring more than ever now, his look still mild.

"Why didn't you offer the Ketries something they would want?" Clark asked him.

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CONTINUE.....................

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INDEX