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Emperor said. "But he's not going to like what I have to say. In private."
    And he speared the last hunk of goat. He snipped it from the fork with sharp white teeth.
    Sten didn't feel sorry for the Khaqan a bit. He sounded—in Kilgour's words—like a "right bastard."

    CHAPTER FOUR
    "A h'llgie th' poss'bil'ty y' may hae saved me," Alex grudged. "Nae, lad. Tis m'shout this round."
    He got up, walked to the bar, paid the barman, and brought back the tray. Four mugs of beer and four single shot glasses of clear liquid. Sten indicated the shot glasses with a questioning finger.
    "Quill. Nae stregg. Thae's none ae that off the Bhor Worlds or away frae th' Emp's palace, so this'll hae t' cure the dog."
    Sten was still a little skull-fried from his marathon dinner-drunk-orders group-plotting session with the Emperor some days earlier. Obediently, he dumped one shot down his throat, gagged politely, and chased it with a beer.
    "Y'll note, Ah'm but bein't civil an' keepin't y' company," Alex said as he did the same. "Dinnae be haein' th' thought Ah'm still a wee alky. Gie it all up, Ah did."
    The two of them sat, anonymous in gray shipsuits, near the back of a spaceport bar near Soward City's vast spacefields. The bar was a businesslike hum of sailors getting drunk enough to transship, or drunk enough to realize they had finally ported, and the whores and hustlers were helping both sets toward their missions.
    "I really did save you?"
    "Oh, aye," Alex said. "She was wee, she was wily, she was gorgeous, and she e'en had her own money."
    "Maybe you should have married her."
    "Ah clottin' near did. Th' banns were read. Th' hall wae hired. Ah found a sky pilot thae'd go through the ceremony wi'oot gigglin'. Ah'd e'en introduced hert' m' wee mum."
    "What did she think?"
    "She consider't, an' said thae i' Ah hadda marry, still so young an' barely beyont th' cradle as Ah am, she c'd live wi' th' lass."
    "I say again my last: maybe you should settle down. Start thinking about the next Laird Kilgour of Kilgour."
    Alex shuddered gently. "Ah dunno, lad. Thae wae a moment… but then Ah thought a' myself, years gone, brain gone i' Ah e'er had one t' begin wi', teeth gone, chewin' on pap, puttin' milk i' th' brandy, wi' bairns bouncin' around an' all. Cacklin' on aboot how th' old days are gone, an' modern clots dinnae lift a candle t' th' mighty ones thae're gone, men frae the old days, when men were men an' th' sheep ran like hell.
    "Disgustin'. Clottin' disgustin'. So Ah considers… looks at your signal… writes oot a well-reasoned arg'ment an' slips out th' back afore dawn."
    "Mr. Kilgour," Sten said. "An act of cowardice! You at least should have stayed and explained."
    "Rotate around it, lad. Th' way th' lass impress't m' mum was by beatin't her ae arm wrestlin.' Ah'm mad, but Ah'm noo daft."
    Sten checked the time. "We're due at the Victory in ten minutes. Let's drink and get."
    Kilgour blurred into motion, old battle reflexes reappearing. The beer and alk on the table vanished. He burped politely, rose, and started toward the exit, threading his way between tables, Sten in his wake.
    Alex's way was blocked by a very large quadruped, whose gray hide looked as if it would make an acceptable suit armor. The being emptied the large plas balloon he had been sniffing and bounced it away into a corner. All three of his—her? its?—eyes glared around separately, then settled on Kilgour. The being's twin manipulating arms flexed.
    "Men! Don't like men!"
    "Ah dinnae either," Alex said equably.
    "You man."
    "No."
    "What you?"
    "Ah'm a penguin. Frae Earth. A wee slickit cowerin't birdie thae lives on herring."
    Sten ran through various ET handbooks, trying to ID the being. Nothing in his memory had four legs, three eyes, two arms, a dim brain—last undetermined for certain, given probability said being was blitzed—stood two and a half meters tall, weighed several squillion kilos, and had a terrible attitude.
    Oh, yeah. Not very vestigal claws