‘When you see the rest of the material you may not care what the Exarch thinks,’ Simon said. ‘You will find that I’ve brought you a high alliance – though it was Gro’s own horns getting it to you.’
‘I had begun to suspect as much. Mr de Kuyl -1 must assume you are still he, for sanity’s sake – that act of surrender was the most elegant gesture I have ever seen. That alone convinced me that you were indeed the Traitor-in-chief of High Earth and no other.’
‘Why, so I was,’ Simon said. ‘But if you will excuse me now, I think I am about to be somebody else.’
With a mixture of politeness and alarm Valkol left him. It was none too soon. He had a bad taste in his mouth which had nothing to do with his ordeals… and, though nobody knew better than he how empty all vengeance is, an inexpungeable memory of Jillith.
Maybe, he thought, ‘Justice is Love’ after all – not a matter of style, but of spirit. He had expected all these questions to vanish when the antidote took full hold, wiped into the past with the personalities who had done what they had done; but they would not vanish; they were himself.
He had won, but obviously he would never be of use to High Earth again.
In a way, this suited him. A man did not need the transduction serum to be divided against himself. He still had many guilts to accept, and not much left of a lifetime to do it in.
While he was waiting, perhaps he could learn to play the sareh.
A Work of Art
INSTANTLY, he remembered dying. He remembered it, how-
ever, as if at two removesas though he were remembering