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for Master Abel is now the Ommundi representative on Gla Taus with legal authority. But because you’re your isohet’s equal in all but age, Master Seth, we wish to acquire your consent, too.”
    “I agree to whatever Abel has agreed,” Seth said, still not understanding what they wanted. He had the uneasy apprehension that he was being played like a fish with a hook in its gill, and yet . . . and yet Lady Turshebsel’s voice and manner were kindly. Her pale round face, framed with blue-black ringlets, bobbed lightly above the waters flowing between them, and he found no deception in her.
    Accompanied by the sucking of his thongs, Pors neared Seth by stalking around the pool. “Have you no questions about what we require? No curiosity about the task? No doubt that you may be able to accomplish what we wish you to accomplish?” He halted halfway around and stared at Seth impatiently, meanwhile towering against the backdrop of a farther portal.
    “If Abel believes we can do what you want—”
    “Not Master Abel and you together,” Douin broke in, “but you alone, with Lord Pors and me as minor accomplices.”
    “You’re at the very center of our plan,” said Pors.
    “But why?”
    “Because of your innocence,” Lady Turshebsel said. “A quality that everyone else in this laulset long ago forfeited. Your innocence, Master Seth, is your principal asset and an essential factor in our calculations. Let me be frank: We wish to use you. You lack many of the preconceptions and biases that could thwart Lord Pors, Master Douin, and your own capable isohet. You are clean and unspoiled.”
    Seth was not flattered. We wish to use you. Along with Günter Latimer, dating from his sixteenth year, he had visited four solar systems, mastering Scansh and Kieri (in addition to Vox, Langlish, and two other human tongues), and he had heard of or actually witnessed cruelties that many persons far older than he would never have credited. His brief experience of the universe had early on apprised him, in fact, of the ubiquity and multiformity of Evil. To be termed an innocent, he felt, was to contradict the whole thrust of this experience. We wish to use you. He could still see his isosire’s body hanging like a butchered carcass from the Kieri Obelisk. . . .
    “You don’t care for my candor?” Lady Turshebsel asked.
    Seth had no answer.
    “All right. You’ve lived among us better than a year. Do you regard the people of Gla Taus, us jauddeb, as”—the Liege Mistress shaped the alien word with humorous distaste—“what your isohet sometimes disdainfully calls, well, quaz ?”
    “Oh, no,” Seth blurted, reddening. At his back, he heard Abel shifting from one foot to another in acute embarrassment.
    “This word implies a lower order of development and intelligence, does it not?” said the Lady, pressing her advantage. But Seth’s reply was apparent in his flustered silence, and she continued: “We too have ugly epithets for foreigners and offworlders, Master Seth. But I believe you when you say that you don’t regard us as . . . quaz. Your isohet’s opinion I cannot discern, however, for the word first fell from his lips.”
    “Lady Turshebsel—” Abel began.
    “Quiet!” Porchaddos Pors snapped.
    “My question now,” the Liege Mistress resumed, “is if your openness to the humanity of other intelligent alien species is broad enough to include the inhabitants of Trope?”
    “Trope, Lady?”
    “The world that circles Anja, seven lights from our star, Gla Taunt. Do you know that world, Master Seth?”
    “It’s a technologically advanced planet that holds itself aloof from Interstel, I believe. It has light-trippers and communicates with passing vessels by using Vox, but it refuses either consular contact or trade. Interstel is biding its time, as it did with Gla Taus until granting Ommundi permission to attempt a mercantile alliance.”
    Pors said defensively, “We wished to develop certain aspects of our