Read The Light That Never Was for Free Online Page A

Wargen’s mother knew that.

3
    Lights wreathed the fabulous hilltop mansion, and Ronony Gynth’s guests, brilliantly cloaked, immaculately garmented, glitteringly adorned, filed into the enormous, gold-festooned rev room, where the steward announced them with the mellifluous tones of a trained melodist.
    The guest of honor, the newly arrived ambassador from Mestil, His Emissary the Grandee Halu Norrt, sat on Ronony’s private balcony with his wife and staff and studied the clustering and drifting and eddying throng with intense interest. Ronony sat nearby, artfully concealed by shadows. Rumor had it that she was an invalid, that she suffered a disfiguring disease, that she was grotesquely fat and disgustingly lazy. Whatever the cause, none of her guests had ever met her. She never accepted invitations, and she attended her own revs only as a secluded spectator.
    She pushed her earpiece aside and touched the ambassador’s arm. “The young man near the entrance—that’s Neal Wargen, the World Manager’s First Secretary.”
    “Ah! The Count Wargen! And the lady?”
    “The countess, his mother. He’s a full citizen of Donov, as was his father, and the fact that he’s Korak’s First Secretary is vastly more important here than his being a registered and certified count somewhere else. All the best people call him ‘Count,’ though. See the girl who’s watching him? That’s Eritha Korak, the World Manager’s granddaughter. She has a mad crush on him, much to his mother’s disgust. The Koraks have always been commoners, wherever they’ve been, and they have no status at all.”
    “But on this world, where there is no official nobility, isn’t the World Manager rather beyond status?”
    Ronony snorted. “World managers are merely civil servants with exaggerated responsibilities. On Donov—oh, all right, beyond status, but that doesn’t make the right people want to have anything to do with him socially. Or with her.”
    “He serves the people of Donov, not you carpetbagging interlopers and vacationers from other worlds,” the ambassador said lightly. “How many citizens of Donov do you number among those ‘right people?’ ”
    Ronony did not answer. A few late-comers swept through the entrance, and her portly steward stepped forward to greet them. She picked up her earpiece and turned a dial on the console at her elbow.
    The steward announced the new guests and turned them adrift, and a gathering wave of servants pounced on them to offer food and beverages.
    Again Ronony pushed the earpiece aside. “There are complaints because there’s no reception line. People had counted on meeting you.”
    “I’m tired of answering questions about those poor animals,” the ambassador growled. “And how would I know what’s causing the riots? I haven’t been home for nine years. Don’t they realize that an assignment to a vacation world is supposed to mean a well-earned vacation?”
    Ronony said soberly, “I do hope the rioting is finished. Fortunately the onus is spread somewhat because so many worlds are involved, but even so—couldn’t there have been controls on the news media to stop this daily agitation?”
    “The situation developed so rapidly that it took everyone by surprise, at which point it was already too late to impose control. The Lord Censor probably felt that the resultant rumors would be more harmful than the facts.”
    “What is causing the riots?”
    “If I knew, or if I had any notion of a remedy, I’d be on Mestil instead of here. It’s a nasty dilemma, and I can’t begin to understand it. Everyone knows that our animaloids are invaluable, and still our subjects riot against them. I’m only grateful that I don’t have the responsibility for solving the problem.” He leaned forward and changed the subject. “Very pretty. A splendid party. But—no music? No dancing?”
    Ronony smiled. “Music has an unfortunate tendency to cover up conversation.”
    “Ah! And you do this