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gray-blue walls, a stone fungus. The narrow passageway opened out into a large room that the lamps failed to light fully, then narrowed again until the Thane was forced to stoop to avoid striking his head on the roof—Cranmer could walk upright. They slid over a scree of small pebbles and around a fractured slab of roofstone. Another room opened up before them, the lamps only dimly showing its perimeters. There the Thane stopped and pointed to a large recess under a projecting shelf of rock.
    “I found this quite some time ago, but I’ve yet to show it to Hoorka-kin. I’ve questioned my reluctance to point it out, but I haven’t any answers.” The Thane laughed, more a modulated exhalation than amusement. “Count yourself privileged, neh?” He fumbled with a tether holder, turning the field off and holding the lamp globe in his hand. He opened the shutters wide and threw the ball toward the darkness of the shelf. The lamp bounced and rolled, wild shadows darting crazily. When it settled, they could see the white arch of an ippicator skeleton, the rib cage upright, the two left legs and three right ones sprawled out to either side, while the small neck and head had fallen and lay in disorder.
    “It’s huge.” Cranmer’s voice was but a whisper.
    “The largest I’ve seen,” said the Thane, pride in his voice. He left unspoken the obvious value of the skeleton. Ippicators were an extinct Neweden animal, and the only asymmetrical mammal yet discovered. Why they had developed the uneven arrangement of limbs was a question of great interest to paleontologists, but what mattered to Neweden was that the skeletons were rare and their bones could be polished to a vivid sheen—ippicator jewelry commanded a great price on the trade markets. This particular skeleton was, due to its size and condition, a thing of great potential wealth. The Thane, for his part, was determined that it would lie undisturbed.
    Cranmer’s stance and awed demeanor showed the impression the ippicator had made on him. The Thane smiled with pleasure. “I had it dated once: took a chip of bone and sent it to the Alliance labs in the Center. It’s at least thirty thousand standards old. That makes it among the oldest ippicators found. And it’s well-preserved. Those bones would hold a polish unlike any other.”
    The Thane settled himself on a rock and cupped his chin on his hands, staring at the skeleton. Cranmer fumbled in his cloak for his recorder, then hesitated. “You mind?” he asked.
    The Thane shrugged. “As you like.” He paused. “I like to imagine that beast, the most powerful of its kind—perhaps an object of awe among its fellows—realizing that his time has come and that he’s no longer capable of ruling the ippicator world. So the beast dragged himself in here, through that passage”—the Thane pointed to a darkness on the far side of the room—“and lay down. It was better than simply growing older and weaker until some stronger challenger fought him and won. A good way to end things, still in control.”
    “Too melodramatic. More likely it wandered in here and the stupid beast couldn’t find its way back out.” Cranmer pursed his lips. “Not that I could make my way back to the Hoorka caverns alone. So this is your meditation spot, yah?”
    “I suppose that’s as good a description as possible.”
    “It bothers you that the Hoorka-thane can have doubts, like the rest of common humanity? My friend, you’re one of a small group of violent people on a violent world, interesting only in that you’ve set up an organization with a moralistic rationale that passes for philosophy, and a religious understructure that is, at best, loosely bound. It’s hardly a thing to make the Alliance rise or fall. You worry overmuch.”
    “And Sondall-Cadhurst Cranmer speaks strongly for a scholar here by the grace of the one he insults, and he has the arrogance of most Alliance people I’ve met.” The Thane used the impersonal