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  Arboghast put aside the report. The section chief looked up and inspected Baro with flinty eyes. Baro was again aware of a mutual antipathy between them, though he could not account for it. It was as if they were members of different species that should never be harnessed together. He wondered if the man had known his father.

  “I knew your father,” Arboghast said and Baro had to exert maximum control not to display a startled reflex. He experienced a moment’s dread that Arboghast could read his mind, a terrifying prospect in light of some of the thoughts Baro had entertained regarding the section chief during his training. But telepathy was impossible in humans, Baro knew.

  “We were classmates at the Academy. He was the most upright man I ever knew,” Arboghast said in a voice devoid of sentiment. He cleared his throat and continued. “I am pleased to inform you that the Archon himself has sent a letter of commendation to be included in your personal file. Congratulations.”

  Baro somehow contrived to inject even greater rigidity into a posture that had already transcended the last vestiges of flexibility. “Thank you, sir,” he said, through lips that barely opened.

  “The Archon has also directed that you be assigned to field work. I have an immediate assignment for you, again at the Archon’s personal order.”

  Baro knew that his eyes had grown larger and he struggled to keep his face immobile as befitted a Bureau agent receiving any news. Whether it was an announcement that he had been named First High Commissioner or that he was to be summarily executed, the true scroot would take it in with mouth set in a firm line and eyes boring straight ahead.

  “This,” said Arboghast, tapping a file folder precisely centered on his otherwise empty desk, “contains all the information you will require, as well as your full agent’s plaque.”

  The section chief picked up the file and Baro almost broke attention to reach for it, but realized just in time that his superior had not yet offered it. The Directing Agent was tapping the edge of the file against his open palm and looking off into the middle distance.

  “This is Archon business,” he said. “We do not ask why you have been selected nor why the Archon has ordained that I am to be your sole contact. You will observe the strictest undercover protocols. You will not draw weapons or equipment from Bureau stores and you will maintain complete communications silence until you make an arrest. You will then contact me, and only me. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “As you are aware,” Arboghast said, “these assignments are often entrusted to pairs of operatives. I have already chosen your partner.” A small smile appeared in the corners of the section chief’s hard mouth as he handed over the file. “He is outside.”

  Baro accepted the folder, crisply executed the gesture appropriate to the difference in their ranks and their presence indoors, then spun on his heel and departed the room. He was back almost immediately.

  “Sir,” he said, “permission to speak.”

  “By all means,” said Arboghast, giving Baro his stoniest glare, though the small smile stayed on his lips. “Blaze away.”

  “I have a strong opinion on your choice of partner for me,” said Baro.

  The Directing Agent compressed his smile and regarded the young man without comment for a moment that stretched into several others. Then he said, “Look out the window at that row of wissol trees beyond the garden wall.”

  Baro did as he was bid. The trees’ foliage gleamed dark purple in the light of the old orange sun.

  “Do you see, midway up the third tree from the left, a small animal closely inspecting its own hindquarters?”

  “I do,” Baro said. The furry little thing was fully engrossed in its work.

  “Would you believe that that creature and I are engaged in a contest?” said Arboghast.

  Baro sensed that the conversation was heading to a conclusion he would not enjoy, but still he said, “I would find it hard to believe.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  The young man was reluctant to ask the next question, but knew he must surrender to the inevitable. “What is the contest?” he asked.

  “We are competing to see which of us can take the least interest in your opinions on any matter whatsoever,” the Directing Agent said, then allowed his smile to reassert itself as he added, “and I am winning.”

  Baro Harkless quietly closed the door to Ardmander Arboghast’s office behind him, and congratulated himself on not slamming it. He took a deep breath, let it out, then took another. He resisted a powerful urge to bend and twist the assignment file he held in his hands. He put down an equally strong desire to consign Ardmander Arboghast to an infernal destination or to kick the furniture in the anteroom. Most of all, he fought against turning his head to regard the man in the black and green of Archonate livery who occupied a chair on the other side of the small space.

  Luff Imbry moved his mouth in a wry grimace and said, “If it’s any consolation, you were not my first choice either.”

  I am often struck by how widely a day can escape from one’s expectations,” said Luff Imbry.

  “You may be struck unexpectedly indeed, if you do not leave me to my thoughts,” said Baro Harkless and turned away.

  Imbry shrugged his green-epauleted shoulders and turned from his partner to inspect the cavernous reaches of the Bureau’s main refectory, to which they had repaired after Arboghast declined to dissolve their partnership. They were seated at a small table in one of the dimmer corners of the great room, which in the hours between mealtimes was largely deserted.

  Imbry tried again. “Come,” he said, indicating the steaming cups and the small heap of cakes on the tray between them, “take a sip of good, hot punge and chew on something tasty. You’ll soon recover your equilibrium.”

  Though he kept his face averted, Baro’s eyes slid toward the fat man. “What is my equilibrium to you? It is not long since I left your scheme broken about your ankles. Under the circumstances, your solicitude is suspect.”

  Imbry shrugged. “True enough. But now fate has slapped us into each other’s arms and bid us be comrades.”

  “Not fate, but Ardmander Arboghast,” said the younger man, taking up a cup of punge.

  Imbry said, “I perceive no distinction between the two.” He chose a seed-covered cake from the pile between them, chewed a little, then added, “I will admit, I was surprised not to find myself en route to the nearest Contemplarium.”

  “Surprised?” said Baro. “I am astonished. No, outraged. No …” He paused and hunted about for the right word, but before he could summon it Luff Imbry spoke for him.

  “I think ‘dumbfounded’ sums it up best.”

  Baro nodded. There were several things he wanted to say concerning Arboghast, Imbry, and the vagaries of fate that had thrust the three of them together in such an unhappy arrangement. But outrage and disappointment were affecting his powers of speech the way a raptor affects a flock of barnyard fowl, so that he feared to open his mouth lest he create only a scattering of unconnected words explosively flying off on random vectors.

  “It’s more surprising still when you consider the history between me and the section chief,” Imbry said.

  With something specific to focus on, Baro found his voice. “What history?”

  Imbry went for another cake, this one well laden with cream. “There was a time when he pursued me and a former partner relentlessly,” he said, pausing to wipe the filling from the corner of his mouth.

  “So you would say that he hates you?” Baro said.

  “With a deep and abiding loathing,” Imbry replied. “Hence my surprise at finding myself in green and black.”

  Baro sat, despondent, and listened to the sound of his partner demolishing the pile of cakes. “At least take some punge,” Imbry said, pushing Baro’s untasted cup toward the young man.

  “I do not wish to drink with you,” Baro said.

  Imbry lifted his cup and swallowed a good third of its contents in one gulp, which he
followed with a sigh of satisfaction. He wiped his upper lip and said, “I have observed that the world often takes scant notice of our wants and worries. I take it that you have long desired to be an agent of the Bureau of Scrutiny.”

  “It is all I ever wanted to be. It is a calling.”

  “Some are called, some are driven,” the fat man said. “I have never accepted either a whip across the buttocks or a ring through the nose. I prefer to amble through the days, adapting my goals to circumstances as they present themselves or, preferably, adapting circumstances to my comfort.”

  “Your philosophy is vapid,” Baro said.

  “Perhaps,” said Imbry. “But see how your grim zeal and my carefree insouciance have brought us to the identical point. We are both scroots. It is a distinction I admit I never sought, yet when the question was put the alternatives were even less appealing.”

  “It is all some sort of horrible mistake.”

  “Now there is a truly vapid philosophy,” said the fat man, “lacking even that leavening of optimism that urges one to rise in the morning and go forth to accomplish. This cup of punge, on the other hand, is not affected by speculation. It is here and now, and very good.” He drank some more and again nudged the other cup toward Baro.

  Baro sighed and wrapped both hands around the warm cup. He lifted and drank without tasting, then said, “What am I to do?”

  “I have always found that the future is best managed in small increments,” Imbry said. “Baby steps, if you will. I suggest that we secure our first toehold on whatever is to come by opening the file Arboghast gave you.”

  Baro had laid the file on the bench beside him when he had sat down. Now he placed it on the table but did not open it.

  Imbry sipped more punge and said, “Come, let us begin. Perhaps you will make as great a splash with this assignment as you did with my capture. You will be promoted while I languish in the rear ranks.”

  Baro brightened. “Yes,” he said, “after all, Archon Filidor himself directed that I be given this assignment. Only the choice of you as my assistant—a mere helper—was Arboghast’s.”

  “These words—helper, assistant—do not match my own perspective on our relationship,” said Imbry.

  Baro drew himself up and regarded the older man sternly. “Your perspective will now be altered. Obviously, I am your superior, having passed through the Bureau Academy with high marks, while you were dragooned into its ranks by threats and menaces.”

  Luff Imbry’s expression might be read in several ways. “How one arrives at a position in life is often less meaningful than what one does once one is there,” he said.

  But Baro was not listening. He had placed the file folder on the dark boards of the tavern table and now opened it. It contained his official agent’s plaque, a thin, hand-sized rectangle of green translucence figured in black icons. Baro laid the plaque on the table and pressed one of the symbols. A small screen appeared in the air above the table. He shook the contents of the me—a wafer about the size of his thumbnail—out of the folder and into his palm, then inserted it into the plaque’s intake.

  A dozen pages of information arranged themselves in miniature on the screen. Baro enlarged the first of these and began to read. As he did so, Luff Imbry applied one finger to the plaque, rotating it until he, too, could scan what was there without craning his neck. Baro put on a wry face, but continued to make his way through the text.

  After he had read the section headed Orders, he said, “We are to locate one Father Olwyn, described as the Sacerdotal Eminence of the Assembly of Tangible Unity but believed to be a fraudster. We will observe his actions and deduce the nature of his scheme, then arrest him once we have sufficient evidence.”

  “I suspect the situation is more complex than that,” said Imbry.

  “It seems straightforward to me,” said Baro.

  Imbry put on a pensive look. “I doubt it is normal to send agents out but forbid them to use Bureau resources or call for backup. Is there any reason why Arboghast should dislike you? Has he overheard you making rude observations about him or his ancestors? Is there some history of enmity between your family and his?”

  Baro shook his head. “He knew my father.”

  “Your father was a scroot?”

  “A captain in the investigations branch. He died when I was young.”

  “Arboghast was in investigations. Perhaps they clashed. Perhaps your father received a promotion Arboghast craved.”

  “That sort of thing does not happen in the Bureau,” Baro said. “We are a dedicated fellowship.”

  Imbry regarded the young man quizzically, then shook his head as if putting aside a rejoinder. “Very well,” he said, “perhaps you remind him of someone he encountered in a bad dream. Or he may be the type who singles out a hapless subordinate and visits upon his victim all the bitterness and bile that trickle down upon him from higher echelons.”

  Baro wanted to defend the Bureau as an institution where such unpleasantness could not happen, but in the light of Arboghast’s choice of partner for him there was no question that the section chief was not his friend.

  “He might be annoyed that the Archon personally selected me for this assignment,” he suggested. “The Bureau is supposed to be beyond political interference, but the Archon’s word is law.”

  Imbry’s face showed that he was weighing things up. “That could explain why he has manacled us together,” he said. “He resents you and hates me. So he sends us on a mission without Bureau support, intending us to fail. You will be demoted and I will go to the Contemplarium.”

  Imbry had gone too far. “A senior Bureau officer is above such a thing,” said Baro.

  Imbry said nothing, but his eyes rolled. After a moment he said, “It makes no difference. Since there is only one direction in which we can move, we will step forward boldly.”

  They skimmed through the section of the file that was headed Background. It included clippings from the Olkney Implicator, the main news organ in the capital. One story was from the social pages and took notice that the magnate Trig Helvic planned to take his daughter on a cruise on the Orgulon, a landship. Another story concerned the same cruise, which was organized by the Assembly of Tangible Unity, described as a new religious society seeking adherents.

  “This seems straightforward to me,” said Baro, when he had read the material.

  “My view differs,” said Imbry.

  “How? Why?”

  “Regard the image that accompanies the report,” Imbry said.

  Baro looked and saw the representation of a soft-faced man with wispy hair and gentle eyes. He was presented as if caught in a moment of prayer, his gaze directed upward and his hands clasped beneath his double chin. The caption identified him as Father Olwyn, Sacerdotal Eminence.

  “He looks to be a pious fellow,” Baro said.

  “Indeed,” said Luff Imbry. “He is the very image of trustworthiness. But appearances can deceive. When I knew him his name was Horslan Gebbling. He was my partner. And together we led Ardmander Arboghast on a merry dance. His failure to capture us may even be why he was transferred from Investigations to Training.”

  Again, Baro sought for words and did not find any. Imbry regarded the workings of the young man’s open mouth and said, “Take more punge. It lubricates the vocal apparatus.”

  Baro drank the stuff without tasting it. “You and this Gebbling were criminal confederates?” he said.

  Imbry’s face assumed an expression of happier days recalled. “Yes, but we did not offer religious salvation. We trafficked in maps to forgotten brillion mines, with an implication that we had found a deposit of black brillion.”

  “There is no such thing as black brillion,” Baro said. “Blue and red, yes, but not black. It is a figment.”

  “You’d be surprised how many people are prepared to believe in figments, if they think they can thereby fulfill their dreams.”

  “Have you spent your whole life cheating and cozening?�
��

  “No,” said Imbry. “As an infant, I mostly slept and ate. But to return to the point: it should now be clear to you that there is no coincidence in our being sent to undo the Assembly of Tangible Unity.”

  “Directing Agent Arboghast sees us as the best chance to penetrate Gebbling’s scheme and bring him to justice,” said Baro.

  “Arboghast will take full credit, should we succeed,” said Imbry. “Hence his orders to proceed without support.”

  Baro wanted to reject the explanation as unbefitting a senior agent, but his logical mind couldn’t find a place to apply a grip.

  “And if we do not succeed,” the fat man went on, “if even Gebbling’s former partner and the brilliant young scroot of the year cannot seize him, perhaps Arboghast will be able to argue that Gebbling is a mastermind and that his transfer to Training was undeserved.”

  “Such machinations do not happen within the Bureau,” said Baro.

  “Of course not,” said Imbry. “In any case, I am happy to undo Horslan Gebbling. When we parted he did so in the middle of the night with the accumulated proceeds of our mutual efforts.”

  “The Bureau is not a vehicle for your private revenge.”

  “I think you’ll find,” said Imbry, “that the Bureau is a great many things not precisely detailed in your manuals and standing orders.”

  Baro gathered up the file and closed it. “While I am in charge of this investigation the Bureau will be what I say it is.”

  “We return to the unsettled question,” said Imbry. “What leads you to assume that you are in charge?”

  “I am the trained agent.”

  “Barely.”

  “You,” said Baro, “have obviously been drafted to assist with this particular case, because you are acquainted with the suspect and know his methods of operation.”