The Procurator said something under his breath.
“Meantime,” offered the rememberer. “The man you asked for. Thosby Anent? He’s waiting to see you.”
He hurried out, and after a long moment the door opened only far enough to admit a lean, rather stooped man who moved through wraiths of smoke on legs oddly bowed, as though he were crippled at the knees. He looked at the three who awaited him, and his posture straightened.
“A peculiar time,” said Codger, bowing slightly. “One in which we might be led to question the very bases of our existence. A time in which humanity’s overwhelming concern with its own affairs must give way to a more general consideration … ”
“Anent?” questioned the Procurator.
“Myself.” Thosby bowed. “Who has lately been much involved in philosophical musing.”
“Can such musings be set aside for the moment?” queried Poracious Luv. “I would suggest that now is not the best time for—”
Thosby interrupted with a grandiose gesture. “But what time is, madam? Is any time best for the consideration of ultimate disaster? When we are faced with—”
“What are we faced with?” demanded the Procurator. “That’s what we want to know! Intelligence Division tells me you are responsible for forwarding reports from the shadow team on Perdur Alas. We’ve received no information!”
Thosby was momentarily paralyzed. He puffed furiously, his head disappearing in a hazy cloud. Poracious Luv lunged from her chair and struck the pipe from his lips. It clattered against the far wall.
“Summon your wits, man! The Procurator wants to know about the team on Perdur Alas.”
“Survivor,” murmured the Master Spy, desperately seeking a role to fit the current circumstance. “Just one survivor.”
“One! Since when?” cried the Procurator.
“Ah, well, one doesn’t know, does one? They simply, ah, disappeared.”
“How long ago?” Poracious barked.
Thosby hum-gargled, deep in his throat. “It’s difficult to say. The information received now is sensory, but is it objective or subjective? Does one count time when one is alone as one does when with one’s fellows. There’s an interesting philosophical—”
“Stop these interminable divagations!” she cried. “When did you know they had disappeared?”
“Well, the equipment says … perhaps thirty, forty standard days, though from the low standard of equipment maintenance I have noticed during my stay here on Dinadh, I would be forced to—”
“Do you have any other information?” the Procurator said in a dangerously calm voice.
“No,” Thosby said sulkily, retreating into Codger.
“None at all?” asked Poracious, unbelieving. She retrieved the pipe from where it had fallen and held it out to the man, like one using a morsel of food to coax an unwilling animal from its den.
“So far as I know, she hasn’t found anything at all interesting,” mumbled Codger, snatching the pipe. The last time he had monitored the recording had been days ago, but he did not mention this.
“She?
“She who?” asked Poracious in a silky tone.
“The survivor.”
“Who in the name of all the excremental and sexually active deities now or ever thought of is this survivor?” demanded the Procurator, his face gray with rage and frustration.
“This girl who seems still to be there,” said Codger. “This XZ51.”
The other three in the room exchanged looks of amazement.
“What girl is he talking about?” asked the ex-king.
Poracious Luv sat down and held her hands high, commanding silence and attention. “Let’s make sense of this! Anent seems to be saying the entire team on Perdur Alas has disappeared except for one girl or woman designated by the code number XZ51. That one is still on Perdur Alas with a functioning sensory recorder. Is that more or less correct?”
“Said that,” muttered Master Spy, biting hard upon his pipe stem, his lips writhing back to disclose a gray-coated tongue and stumpy, smoke-blackened teeth, at the sight of which Poracious averted her eyes. “Already said that!”
“You have the records.”
“No,” he said between clamped teeth.
“You don’t have the records? Where are they?”
“At my house.”
“You will provide them?”
“That was the plan.” It was a favorite saying of Thosby’s, used in reply whenever anyone asked him when he would do something he had said he would do a long time previously.