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your back, should you so much as breathe suspicion of the true state of affairs.
    “Only my play-acting kept you and your mate—and possibly the rest of your crew—from death. Or from becoming living puppets.
    “When you proposed to warp our two ships together, the Fanzoii rejoiced. They planned to swarm aboard in seconds and take over the Melville . The best you could have expected was to be cast adrift in my wreck.
    “I knew I had to do something. I begged to come with you. Tess silently assented, believing me sapped of my will. Luckily she could not see the whole shape of my thoughts.
    “It worked out as you witnessed. God be thanked it did. If only Monteagle might also have been saved. If only none of this had happened!”
    Merino drained his glass. I wordlessly refilled it. He sat unspeaking.
    Here then was the man I had labeled in my mind a coward and a spineless fop. Weak in the face of his unnatural lusts he might have been—but which of us has not some hidden master he bows down to will-lessly? Coward? Fop? How would I have endured his fate?
    “I will take you home,” I said at last.
    “If only you could,” said Merino, and gazed ceilingward with a shiver.
     
    VII. A Partial Transcript
     
    Seventeen years passed between the time I watched the despondent Anselmo Merino, a borrowed suit of my clothes hanging loosely on him, walk down the gangplank of my detoured ship and onto the dock at Saint Ursula, and the time I next heard of him.
    Much happened, of course, in those years. I returned to Tirso Town, a continent away, where I sold my last load of satinwood for more than I had expected when I embarked. There I paid off my men and found quite to my surprise that all my taste for being a free trader was gone, leaving a film of ashes in my mouth. It was as if something vital had been sapped from me off Encantada Island, never to be replenished.
    I became a shipper of other men’s goods, an easy and undemanding profession. Gradually I recovered my old spirits, but was never wholly as I had been.
    One day, after the interval of time mentioned above, I found myself supervising the loading of some crates. Trundlebots were streaming aboard like ants when one malfunctioned and plunged back several meters down to the stone quay with its box. Robot and crate smashed with a sickening sound.
    In the process of cleaning up the debris I noticed that the pottery in the crate had been wrapped in old and yellowed newspaper. Idly, I examined a sheet.
    Its masthead read The Saint Ursula Daily Gleaner . The date was several months after Merino had disembarked.
    I gathered up all the sheets I could find and returned to my cabin.
    There I read—with, strangely, no feeling of surprise, as if I had always known that I would some day learn of this—a partial transcript of the trial of Anselmo Merino, on charges of dereliction of duty, gross misconduct, and bestiality.
    The possible sentence specified that the prisoner be remanded to the Holy Inquisitors for undescribed punitive measures, should he be judged guilty.
    I here re-transcribe what I believe is the most relevant—and revelatory—section of the fragment, in an effort to further illuminate that odd and flawed, yet compelling, man, Anselmo Merino, with whose life mine had the fortune—whether good or ill, I still cannot say—to become inextricably entangled, and whom I yet brood on constantly.
    His fate the fragment failed to reveal.
    I dare to hope they found him innocent, or deemed mercy applicable and pardoned him.
     
Testimony Given in the Trial of Aristarch Anselmo Merino, in the Matter of the Loss of His Ship, the Golden Cockerel , and the Miscarriage of His Mission. 6 January 902 Post Scattering
     
    judge: Quiet in the court! There must be a decorous silence, however repugnant the testimony becomes, or the court will be cleared! Fine. See that it is maintained. Prosecutor, you may proceed.
     
    prosecutor: Thank you, Your Honor. Let me recapitulate, Aristarch