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up to it. A woman named Madame Delubovoska and I are on opposite sides of a very small international issue. Madame and I are related. Madame, it turns out, is your half-brother's aunt, his mother's much younger sister. Today, in New York, your half-brother was visiting his aunt and I met him. Is that somewhat more clear?
    I said he much resembled you."
    "It's you he resembles, actually. When I first saw you, I thought you were Harvey."
    "That's true. You even said so." There was a long silence, a calculating silence. "Marianne, may I come see you?"
    "You're in New York."
    "No. I was in New York. I'm about two blocks from you, in a phone booth."
    "Well, of course. Yes. Can you find the house—oh, you've already been here once."
    "I'll find you." Dry-voiced, humorous, amused at her confusion. She put her hands against her flaming face. It took practice to behave with calm and poise around men like Makr Avehl—around men at all. Marianne had not practiced, had no intention of practicing, for she had decided not to need such skill. She told herself that just now her concerns were house-wifely. She hadn't dusted, hadn't vacuumed since the weekend.
    Well, it didn't look cluttered, except for the Box. Better leave it, even if he noticed it.
    There was nothing in the house to offer him except some sherry and cheese and crackers. Well, he couldn't complain, dropping in unexpectedly this way. Quick look in the mirror, quick wash up of hands and face. No time for makeup. No need with that hectic flush on lips and cheeks. "Lord," she thought, "one would think I had never had anyone drop in before." A moment's thought would have told her the truth of this. There had been no one to drop in. Except for Mrs. Winesap. And the plumber. And the phone man. And people of that ilk. The stairs creaked outside her door.
    He stood there in a soft shirt and jeans, not at all like a Prime Minister, perhaps more like her childhood dream of a fairy tale prince.
    "You didn't bring your horse and lance," she said, caught up in the fantasy.
    "The joust isn't until later," he replied, "unless you have a dragon you want skewered in the next half hour?" She was so involved in the story she was telling herself that it did not seem in the least remarkable that he had read her mind. Laughing, she waved him in.
    They drank sherry and ate cheese. Makr Avehl sprawled on the window seat and waved his finger in her face as he lectured on the day's events. "I made my speech. Madame made her speech. Neither of us convinced the other. I will now bore you greatly by telling you what the dispute is about?" There was an interrogative silence, not long, for she was happy to let him carry the burden of their conversation. "Madame and I are cousins, of the same lineage, you understand. When our land was cut into two parts in the last century—as the result of some minor Czarist expansion or other, utterly unimportant and long forgotten except to those of us directly involved—Tahiti's great-grandfather was in the northern piece of the country and my great-grandfather was in the southern part. They were brothers. You heard my little speech the other day, so you know that Alphenlicht is a theocracy." He bit a cracker noisily, examining her face. "Don't wrinkle your nose so. There are nice theocracies, and ours is one. We are not reactionary or authoritarian; we do not insist upon conformity or observation of taboos." He raised one triangular brow at her, giving her a brilliant smile, and she felt herself turning to hot liquid from her navel to her knees as her face flamed.
    She rose, made unnecessary trips with glasses, ran cold water over her wrists in the kitchen.
    He went on. "At any rate, in the southern half of Alphenlicht, things went on very much as they had for a very long time. We did begin sending some of our young people out of the country to be educated, and we did begin to import some engineers to do modem things like building roads and bridges.
    We also imported