"Breakfast, Mr President," said Nodo, bringing the tray in himself, and placing it on Heineman's desk.
        "You," said Heineman, hoarsely. Then, whispering fiercely: "What are you doing here?"
         Tan Spanda Del Sholomok Nodo, Heineman's industrious media analyst, had never before put in an appearance at the Salsa Soko Pelchis this early in the morning. And it certainly wasn't his job to deliver breakfast.
        "I came to see how you are," said Nodo. "He hurt your throat, did he?"
        "Tried to strangle me," said Heineman, in the same hoarse whisper, the best he could manage.
        "While I'm here," said Nodo, "I might mention that we've had some complaints about Panjalo."
        "Panjalo?" said Heineman, as if the woman was a stranger.
        "Your sister has been trying to do missionary work right here in Lantis," said Nodo. "She's upset several people. We've had complaints."
        "You suggest?" said Heineman, the pain of a damaged throat keeping his speech to the shortest.
        "Teach her a lesson," said Nodo. "Throw her in prison. You'd be glad you did."
        "Free speech," said Heineman, using the briefest cliches to shorthand a political position. "Open society. Freedom of religion."
        "That's hardly the issue," said Nodo. "Oh, and there's rumours. Someone's going to burn down a mirarilusistan."
        "Have to eat broccoli," said Heineman. "Leave."
        "I'm sorry to have intruded," said Nodo. "My apologies, Mr President."
         And, with a bow, Nodo exited. As Nodo left, Heineman realized they hadn't discussed the Ema-Ema-Enji Holographic Geohistorical Research Team. Never mind. That could wait. Today's business was with the assassin. And, of course, with the broccoli. Heineman looked at the meal in front of him, grimaced, then resigned himself to the inevitable, and began to eat.
         
        * * *

         When Heineman Yakaskam Jubiladilia had first become president, he had declared that he would no longer eat broccoli.
        "All my life, I've hated broccoli," he had said. "Now that I'm president, I don't have to eat it any longer."
         This statement had provoked an enormous response.
         The very next day, the broccoli growers had started a fast-unto-death on the front lawn of the Salsa Soko Pelchis. Broccoli growers? Heineman had vaguely known, on a theoretical basis, that broccoli was grown locally, since Chalakanesia did not import vegetables. But the reality-made-flesh had still come as a surprise. Seventy broccoli farmers! How could all of Islam Demaxus eat broccoli sufficient to support them all?
         On the third day of the hunger strike, students from the College of Gardeners had marched on the Presidential Mansion, bearing banners proclaiming broccoli to be a plant sacred to both Beauty and Use. They had then rioted, and had thrown stones, and had burnt Heineman in effigy. Heineman had responded by unleashing the riot dogs. On being repulsed from the Presidential Mansion, the students had then stormed the senate chamber, and had severely beaten several of the more venerable senators.
         Heineman had pretended he didn't care. After all, he had no friends in the senate, and had several enemies, most of them venerable.
         There is no telling where all this would have ended had Atlanta not come to see Heineman. Heineman Yakaskam Jubiladilia had been ready to face down senators, broccoli farmers and rioting students, but his sister's icy wrath had been another matter altogether.
        "How can you be so fatuously childish?" she had said. "The presidency is a serious job, not a forum for your self-indulgence in whims and temper-tantrums!"
         In the fact of Atlanta's scorn, Heineman had taken a sacred vow to eat broccoli once a day for every day of the seven years of his presidency.
         With three years gone and four yet to run, Heineman still ate broccoli every morning. His chef invariably made him the same dish for breakfast: a little hot brown gravy mixed with boiled carrots, boiled broccoli, fried squid and fried onion. Heineman had grown quite fond of it. (With good reason. The combination of squid and broccoli is particularly pleasing, and deserves a place in every recipe book, though one of our cookery consultants advises that most people would find such a dish too heavy for breakfast, and suggests it be reserved for dinner).
         This morning, Heineman ate his breakfast with difficulty. His throat could manage the meal, which was fairly soft, but he had hurt both hands in his fight with the assassin. He had not noticed the injuries at the time, but he was certainly noticing them now. His hands shook as he spooned up his carrots and broccoli. He spilt gravy on his flower-embroidered jacket. His face was lined with strain; when he spoke, it was in scarcely more than a gasping whisper; and, with his white hair, he could have been mistaken by a foreigner for an old, old man.
         But, in fact, Heineman Yakaskam Jubiladilia was only 31 years of age, for it was then Belta 2368, the Year of the Cloud in the 550th Chalakanesian Cycle, and his life was not yet halfway done. Assuming he got to live his allotted span. Assuming there was not a second assassin to follow the first.
        "Heineman," said Atlanta, intruding upon her brother's breakfast. "Are you all right?"
         As ever, Heineman's elder sister was wearing the grey uniform of the law. Atlanta was a lawyer, and never let anyone forget it.
        "Throat," said Heineman hoarsely, pointing at that injured organ.
        "Okay, okay," said Atlanta. "You don't have to speak. Where's the killer?"
        "At La Lantis," said Glotimus Bullock.
        "La Lantis!" said Atlanta. "What's he doing there? They might have been the ones who sent him! They might make him disappear!"
        "He was cut up bad," said Bullock. "He needed a hospital." That was a telling point. The research institute of La Lantis had the only decent hospital in all of Chalakanesia. "Besides," continued Bullock, "Mr President here said the man was his friend."
        "What funny friends you have, Heineman," said Atlanta. "Have you finished? No? I think you have finished. We don't have all morning. Quick. Let's get across to La Lantis before they think about disappearing this goon. I only hope we're not too late."
         With that, Atlanta hustled her brother out of the Presidential Mansion.
         The city of Lexis was divided into four districts: Westport, Eastport, Central and the Mexicus Hojo. Everything which related to the administration and the bureaucracy was in Eastport: the Court of Justice, the College of Gardeners, the senate chamber, the Presidential Mansion, and the research institute of La Lantis, which was housed in a gold-domed building known as the dome of the Conference.
         With Atlanta in the lead, Heineman's party forced its way into La Lantis, despite the truculent opposition of the soldiers from Heaven and Hell who guarded its entrance.
         Heineman had never liked La Lantis. He had always been intimidated by its humming machinery, by its cold over-bright lights, by its alien smell of disinfectant, and by the machined precision of its architecture. The rest of Chalakanesia was rough-hewn by comparison, even the parts which had been worked upon by the Balancers of the classical period. If it had not been for Atlanta, Heineman would never have dared invade the place in such a high-handed manner. But Atlanta was irresistible, and her leadership soon brought them to the bedside of the assassin.
         The man had been operated on, and was still somnolent from anaesthetic drugs.
        "Wake up," said Atlanta, shaking him by the shoulder.
        "Hey!" said a medical corpsman, coming into the room in the wake of the intruders. "You can't do that!"
        "Bullock!" said Atlanta.
         Glotimus Bullock grabbed the corpsman, and strongarmed him efficiently, after which he was in no state to protest any further.
        "Atlanta," said Heineman, with all the force his damaged throat permitted, "you'll get us into trouble."
        "Someone's trying to kill you," said Atlanta, unhooking the patient's medical chart from the bottom of the bed. "Doesn't that suggest you're in trouble already?" She looked at the chart. "Blogus Mogus," she read.
        "His name?" said Heineman, hoarsely. "That's a start."
        "No," said Atlanta, giving her brother a withering glance. "Blogus Mogus is a name-of-convenience for a person otherwise unidentified. It means they don't know who he really is."
        "Oh," said Heineman.
         Heineman was always both baffled and intimidated by Atlanta's matchless command of the minutiae of life in the Great Powers of the Conference, the Gulf of Heaven and the Chasms of Hell. As president of Chalakanesia, Heineman had got to grips with the leading statistics of both Heaven and Hell, and understood the dynamics behind those statistics, but it was Atlanta who knew the significance of Blogus Mogus, and what it means when a woman ties three ribbons to the tail of her poodle-dog, and why a cat is bad luck in a fire station.
         Heineman would have felt less inadequate had Atlanta revealed that most of her information was gleaned from the pages of the imported comic books to which she was so thoroughly addicted. However, this secret she kept from him. And, indeed, as she grew older and more conscious of her dignity, she no longer read comic books in public at all, and had them delivered covertly to her law office in plain brown envelopes.
        "Ever seen him before?" said Atlanta, scrutinizing the assassin, the essentially anonymous Blogus Mogus.
        "No," whispered Heineman, looking down on the man, at the puffy eyes, the swollen raspberry cheeks, the pink-pale skin which marked him as a foreigner. Chalakanesians were almost always brown or silver: they were almost never pinkish.
        "Are you sure?" said Atlanta. "You've never seen this man?"
        "Not ever," whispered Heineman.
         He felt stupid, whispering, but his throat gave him very little option.
        "A tattoo," said Atlanta, examining the man's arm. "We can presume his real name is Oberon."
         A presumption logical enough, since the motto of the tattoo was "Titania Loves Oberon". Atlanta let the arm go. It fell, slackly, and lolled off the bed. Heineman put it back, guiltily, but it wouldn't stay put.
        "There's a tattoo shop by the Chadlin Steps," volunteered Bullock. "My grandmother got her saladek done there."
        "Saladek?" said Heineman, tucking the patient's arm under the sheet.
         Being ignorant of the customs of the Gan, Heineman had absolutely no idea what a saladek might be.
        "You don't want to know what a saladek is," said Atlanta firmly. "It's obscene."
        "Oh," said Heineman, feeling very much the child. Attempting to recover adult status, he tried to be authoritative about the obvious. "That was certainly done here," said Heineman, pointing to a tattoo on Oberon's chest. The tattoo showed two of the merfolk courting amidst drifts of weed and ghosting fish: a common Chalakanesian theme. "So we'll get someone to check the tattoo parlour."
        "Of course," said Atlanta, with a brisk impatience which implied that that went without saying. "We should check with specialists on mugwumpus, too."
        "Of course," said Heineman in turn, trying to pretend he had thought of that, too.
         But Heineman was unconvincing, and rightly so, since this most obvious of ideas had not occurred to him.
         Mugwumpus is a rare allergic reaction suffered by some people who live in Chalakanesia. A classical text, the fragmentary remains of which can still be studied in the Garnigi Library in Midas Makorum, states that mugwumpus is actually a reaction to the metapsychic faultline. Modern medical science has been unable to substantiate this claim, though some support is given by the fact that sufferers invariably recover if they travel beyond those realms afflicted by the faultline.
         This man, the ill-fated Blogus Mogus, he whom they supposed to be properly named Oberon, was showing all the typical signs of mugwumpus: a puffy face, swollen cheeks disfigured with lumps of raspberry red, and green bruises beneath the fingernails. In advanced stages of the disease, the fingernails either fell off or thickened into thick claws. Hector the Pig, the notorious tyrant of the feudal period, had suffered very badly from mugwumpus. Suffering had done nothing to sweeten his disposition, and, when his own fingernails had hardened to claws, he had used them destructively.
        "Who do we know who treats mugwumpus?" said Atlanta. "For that matter, can it be treated?"
        "I don't know," said Heineman.
        "My grandmother used to say that soup was good for it," volunteered Bullock. "Miso soup, that was it. You know, from soy beans. Oh, and green tea. Three cups for breakfast. Or was that garlic?"
        "Let's check his dentistry," said Atlanta, ignoring Bullock's unsolicited interruption.
        "His teeth?" said Heineman, in a hissing whisper expressive of astonishment. "Whatever for?"
        "They do dental work in Heaven which they don't do here," said Atlanta. "Likewise in Hell. Gold teeth. Vampire prongs, that's a fashion, or was about a year ago."
         Heineman swallowed saliva, trying to moisten and soothe his throat.
        "Vampire prongs?" said Heineman. "What are you talking about?"
         It would have taken too long to explain, so Atlanta simply grabbed a bedside torch and a tongue depressor, and was about to invade the privacy of Oberon's mouth when a military officer entered the room. For some reason, he was holding a green tennis ball in his right hand.
        "Yes?" said Heineman, in the most impressive whisper he could manage.
        "Director's compliments," said the officer, a glossy captain from Heaven's Diplomatic Guard, "and he'll see you in his office immediately."
        "You'd better go," said Atlanta. "Well, what are you waiting for? Don't worry about me! If anyone gives me any trouble, Bullock will goon him."
         She looked pointedly at the captain, who sniffed, then addressed himself to the medical corpsman whom Bullock had gooned earlier. The corpsman was now just about capable of sitting up.
        "You," said the captain, nudging the corpsman with the glossy polished leather of his toe. "This woman here is the president's sister. Give her any assistance she asks for." Having delivered that order, the captain squeezed his tennis ball convulsively.
        "Sir," said the corpsman, acknowledging the order, then turned to one side and vomited all over the floor.
         The captain turned on his heel, without bothering to give Heineman the salute which was his presidential due, and marched away with the air of a man who feels that the floor on which he walks is unworthy of his boots. As he walked, he negligently bounced his tennis ball and caught it — childish, surely, but it was done with such panache that Heineman could not help but admire it as a sophisticated exercise in style.
        "Break into the personal effects locker," said Atlanta, now she had carte blanche to do whatever she wanted. "Maybe there's evidence."
         Heineman was about to say that there would be nothing in Oberon's locker, that the man had worn nothing but a pair of work shorts, then gave up. As Bullock started demolishing the personal effects locker, and as Atlanta pried open Oberon's mouth, Heineman went upstairs to the Director's office.
         He knew the way.
         Heineman found Ambassador Teladex working in the vicinity of his desk. His head, connected to no apparent body, hung above the desk, and his hands were scribing over papers. There was nothing but empty air between the hands and the head.
         As Heineman knew full well, Teladex's body was elsewhere in La Lantis, safe in the vodo projector, that device vulgarly known in Chalakanesia as the vug machine. Teladex's head and hands were simply projections generated by that vug machine.
         In former days, Teladex had always gone about Chalakanesia in his own flesh, but now he made a point of doing all his daily business as a vug. He was trying to make a political point. He was trying to prove that the use of the vug machine was perfectly safe, even though that machine was powered by an omagulous toad, a device of the kind which had devastated Chalakanesia in the course of some unwise experiments some three years earlier.
         These days, the sole remaining omagulous toad on Chalakanesian soil was safe in the basement of La Lantis, buried beneath enormous amounts of gold shielding. While it remained there, it could be thought of as a clean, safe source of energy, efficiently powering all the elaborate devices protected by the golden dome of La Lantis. But very few people in Chalakanesia trusted it any more.
        "Mr President," said Teladex, after an insulting delay. "One moment."
         So there was going to be insult heaped on insult. Very well. Heineman was used to it. He was president, after all, and in his experience most people seemed to think they had not just a right but a positive duty to insult the president on all possible occasions.
         While waiting, Heineman read the papers on Teladex's desk, and saw the ambassador was filling out an application to join the City of Lexis Cactus Growers Club. Looking round the Director's office, Heineman noticed that there were several small cacti growing in pots which were ranged along the windowsill. He must have seen them before, but had never consciously registered them.
         Outside the window, two women from the embassy staff were playing at tennis. The sight drew Heineman's attention, for he had always liked tennis, at least if women were playing. There was something about those bodies in their pure white tennis gear.
        "Mr President," said Teladex, recalling Heineman's attention from the tennis court.
        "Mr Ambassador," said Heineman, in a whisper.
        "How are you?" said Teladex.
        "As well as can be expected," said Heineman, touching his throat tenderly.
        "Here," said Teladex, pushing a paper cup across his desk. "Drink this."
         Heineman looked dubiously at the contents of the cup. There was a pink fluid inside.
        "Drink it," said Teladex. "You'll feel much better."
         In a moment of weakness, Heineman obeyed. As soon as he had swallowed the stuff, he wondered if he had been poisoned.
        "Better?" said Teladex.
         Heineman put a hand to his throat again, more tentatively than before, then ventured to speak.
        "It's ... it's okay," said Heineman, surprised, in something which at least halfway to being his normal voice.
        "I'm glad to hear it," said Teladex. "I'm always tender of your health. Similarly, I am tender of the health of those who work for me, and those who are under my protection. I am therefore concerned to hear that your sister is downstairs, and is amusing herself by torturing an unconscious postoperative patient."
        "So sue me," said Heineman, trying to hang tough.
         Teladex sighed.
        "Heineman," said Teladex, "I'm trying to be your friend. How do you think this is going to play in Aloominum Tropis? In Barth Banchup Bakchakris? This is an embassy."
        "I was almost killed last night," said Heineman.
         The fact was really starting to sink in. He had very nearly been killed. Furthermore, the premonitory dreams to which he had begun to give credence had given him no warning of the attack. Unless you could count the carpet-dream as such a warning. But that was a memory-dream, inspired by the time when he had dived on the wreck of the Zuzu Magore, and had in literal truth almost been killed by a carpet. These days, he endured that dream regularly.
        "I can understand that you are upset," said Teladex, steepling his fingers, which created a very odd effect when his hands were floating unsupported in the air. "However, this is still an embassy."
        "Is it?" said Heineman. "I thought it was a research institute."
         In fact, it was both. La Lantis, which represented the interests of the Conference of Heaven and Hell in Chalakanesia, was both a scientific research institute and an embassy. Accordingly, Chalakanesians were never quite sure whether the Great Powers meant to treat with them as human beings or study them as specimens.
         Teladex was both Director of La Lantis and the ambassador who represented the Conference in Chalakanesia. He was at one and the same time a scientist who had to study the Chalakanesians and a diplomat who had to negotiate with them: an anomalous situation, and one which offended his sense of proprietary as much as it offended Heineman. It made it difficult for him to take a strong line with Heineman.
        "I'm only trying to do what I can to help you," said Teladex.
        "Are you?" said Heineman. "In three years, what have you done to get me and mine a redress for wrongs?"
         Heineman was talking about the damage done to Chalakanesia by the experiment which La Lantis had undertaken with the omagulous toad. Teladex, for his part, did not want to rehash that subject one more weary time.
        "I can't necessarily make things better for you," said Teladex, "but I can perhaps help keep you from making things worse. Did you know there is a media team in Lexis?"
        "I had been appraised of that," said Heineman.
         He had, too, and now remembered that he was scheduled to do an interview with that very team — a fact which had previously slipped his memory.
        "Some of the data which the media team is gathering will not play well with the great public of the Conference," said Teladex ponderously.
        "Oh?" said Heineman.
        "The House of Death, for example," said Teladex. "Your hospital for the Gan."
        "House of Death?" said Heineman. "Nobody calls it that, only in jokes. Anyway, it's not my hospital. It's a private establishment run by — "
        "I know, I know," said Teladex, waving away Heineman's excuses. "You don't have to explain things to me. All I'm saying is that there are things in Chalakanesia which could easily be made to look very, very bad to the public of the Conference."
        "And?" said Heineman.
         For a moment, Teladex did not answer. From outside there came the satisfying thok-pok of a tennis game, then a woman's laugh.
        "Tennis," said Teladex, looking out of the window. "Do you realize, Chalakanesia can't even manufacture its own tennis balls?"
        "As president of Chalakanesia," said Heineman stiffly, "I am of course cognizant of the limitations of our manufacturing base."
        "Then you appreciate the disparity between Chalakanesia and the Great Powers of the Confederence."
        "I do not need a lesson in political geography," said Heineman. He tried to make it sound impressive, but his throat was getting sore again, and what came out of his mouth sounded a bit hard-scraped and quavery. He tried again. "I don't need lessons."
        "Don't you?" said Teladex. "Let me tell you something, Heineman. When someone wants to go to war, they usually look for an excuse. If there is no such excuse, then political prudence demands that we generate such an excuse. A border incident, for example. Or an outrage against an ambassador, or against an embassy."
        "Have you been instructed to threaten me?" said Heineman coldly.
         Though Heineman would never have described himself as a brave man, he was a Chalakanesian, and the scion of one of the great Families of Islam Demaxus. His status as such was the foundation of his life. A threat to Chalakanesian independence was a threat to Heineman himself, to his fundamental identity. Hence the stringency of his response.
        "The Great Powers make no territorial claims on Chalakanesia," said Teladex. "Even so, it is still unwise for your sister to be at work downstairs, manufacturing the very kind of incident which would serve as a pretext for war if, in fact, the Powers of the Conference did have such designs upon Chalakanesia."
        "Even though a horse is larger than a porcupine," said Heineman, "it would be unwise for a horse to try to swallow a porcupine."
        "Heineman," said Teladex, "all I'm trying to say is that it would be wise for you to do your best to demonstrate that Chalakanesians are in fact capable of self-government. This includes reigning in your sister."
         Heineman was stunned by the enormity of the insult which had been delivered to him. Capable of self-government? Chalakanesians had been managing their own affairs for the last seven thousand years! There had been a great civilization in Chalakanesia before Heaven and Hell even learnt to make mousetraps. The Balancers had been at work in Chalakanesia when the savages of the Gulf of Heaven had still been painting themselves with blue mud in the boglands of Eo-Eo Hoptus, and the headhunters of the Chasms of Hell had still been trying to appease the Earth Gods by chucking screaming virgins down volcanic vents.
         As for the current scientific and military prowess in which the Great Powers so ostentatiously luxuriated, why, that owed nothing to any kind of cultural superiority. True, Chalakanesia could not match the Great Powers muscle for muscle. The scattered islands of the Chalakanesian archipelago were lightly populated, starved of metals, poorly supplied with fresh water and short of arable land. Furthermore, the metapsychic faultline disrupted commerce, impeded communications and made it difficult to either develop or to use the more delicate kinds of high technology.
         Even so, the ideas and methodologies which had initially set Heaven and Hell on the road to greatness had for the most part been sourced in Chalakanesia. This was historical fact. The greatest scholars of the Great Powers unanimously acknowledged as much. It was Chalakanesia which had invented mathematics, logic, paper, gunpowder, the alphabet, the printing press, movable type, systematic medicine, constitutional law and the first rudiments of experimental science.
         It was further claimed that the first cookery book in history was a Chalakanesian product; and that Chalakanesia had invented the oar, the sail, the rowlock, the wheel, the windmill, the pressurized rice cooker and the ouija board. The scholars of the Great Powers, even if they privately thought some of these additional claims to be extravagant (particularly the one about the rice cooker) nevertheless did not see fit to oppose them.
         But, while the glories of Chalakanesia were part of the common learning of the peoples of the Scattered Pearls (as the islands of Chalakanesia are poetically known), the ordinary citizens of Heaven and Hell were utterly ignorant of the vast contribution which had been made to civilization by the islands of the metapsychic faultline.
         And their ambassadors shared in this ignorance!
        "What am I to take from your silence?" said Teladex. "Is it symptomatic of thought? Or are you venturing an insult?"
        "I'm sorry," said Heineman, recalling himself to the office. "I was woolgathering."
        "Better that you do your gathering downstairs," said Teladex. "Gather in your sister, and get her out of here."
        "That might be easier if we could have a guarantee of access to this — this — "
         What was the man's name? Brat it! Heineman had forgotten! He snapped his fingers, trying to remember, but the trick failed him.
        "I make no claims on Mr Snap-Your-Fingers," said Teladex. "As soon as he's fit to move, you can have him. But, for your own sake, if not for mine, get your sister out of here!"
        "I will," said Heineman. "I will."
         Heineman was as good as his word, and went downstairs to remove Atlanta. He found her inking the fingertips of the unconscious Oberon.
        "Whatever are you doing?" said Heineman.
        "Taking fingerprints," said Atlanta. "You never know, it might be a clue."
        "You have an unlimited capacity to astound me," said Heineman.
        "That's because you're so stodgy," said Atlanta. "Bullock, give me that paper pad."
         Once Atlanta had taken Oberon's fingerprints, Heineman managed to persuade her to quit La Lantis. Teladex, in turn, surrendered the assassin the very next day. By that time, Oberon was ambulatory. Even so, he remained mute under interrogation -but was soon identified with the help of the proprietor of the Tatsu Clapsu, a tattoo parlour by the Chadlin Steps.
         The proprietor, one Dem Lysander, was brought into Oberon's presence, and identified him in moments.
        "That's Eglug Oberon," said the proprietor. "What's he doing here?"
        "He tried to kill me," said Heineman.
        "Well, what would you expect?" said Dem Lysander. "The man's a homicidal maniac, he's been locked up in the Rebus Rokroth for the last ten years."
        "Are you sure?" said Atlanta.
        "Sure? Of course I'm sure! We were burglars together, him and me and Snug Starvling, when one night he turned all funny and bashed old Snug to death with a crowbar."
        "Is this a confession?" said Atlanta.
        "Confession?" said Dem Lysander, startled. Then, seeing what she was driving at: "Oh, no, miss, this isn't a confession. This is history. I've done my time, three years in the Snork."
         His reference was to the Snork Deebus, the prison located west of Westport, on the very outskirts of the city of Lexis.
        "Well, then," said Atlanta, "our next move is to go to the Reebus Rokroth, and call them to answer for their missing prisoner."
         Heineman and Atlanta shortly did just that, climbing to the lunatic asylum on the heights of the great rock of Flanjegus Mo. They took with them Bullock and Brod. These professional strongarm specialists, adepts in the higher arts of gooning, both looked forward with eager anticipation to the prospect of a proper punchup.
        "That was too easy at the embassy," said Bullock, meaning La Lantis. "Let's see what happens when we really get going!"
         But the pair got no chance to get going, for they met with no opposition at the lunatic asylum.
         Atlanta's party was greeted promptly and politely by Qod Patrimus Belch, the manager of the Rebus Rokroth (and, incidentally, a grandson of the honorable Wolfganga Zenseneth Belch, Wolfganga being a past president of Chalakanesia, a native of the island of Jaz Diva who had chosen to settle on Islam Demaxus in his retirement).
        "I'll show you to our records office," said Belch, "and you can have the run of the place. The trusty will assist you."
        "Trusty?" said Heineman. "You mean, a lunatic?"
        "Well," said Belch, doubtfully. "Theoretically. But don't let that put you off. He's perfectly reliable."
         But when the presidential party was shown to the records office, they were greeted by none other than Senator Tulip, who, though he could be called many things, could scarcely be called reliable. The man was three times a tax defaulter, and had recently been indicted for smuggling xzinither, which was a capital offence.
        "Tulip!" said Heineman in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
        "What do you think he's doing here?" said Atlanta. "He's hiding out!"
        "I got myself a good lawyer," acknowledged Tulip smugly. "Unfit for trial on grounds of insanity."
        "Perversion of justice," muttered Atlanta.
         She was furiously jealous of any lawyer who had the privilege of defending clients accused of capital crimes, since her own legal affair had largely been the dismal business of defending fishermen who were in technical breach of some part of Chalakanesia's maze of arcane, conflicting or nonsensical fishing regulations.
        "Atlanta," said Heineman, seeing that his sister looked set to make an enemy out of the unfortunate Tulip, "are we here to catch an assassin, or are we here for what?"
        "We're here," said Atlanta, recovering herself, "on an issue of state importance. Tulip. Help us get what we want, and you're a friend for life."
        "However long that is," said Bullock, who hadn't quite followed the tenor of the conversation, and thought a threat was called for.
        "Bullock," said Heineman, pained. "Wait outside."
         Bullock obeyed, and, with the willing help of Senator Tulip, Atlanta and Heineman soon made themselves masters of a truly remarkable discovery.
         According to the records of the Rebus Rokroth, the assassin Eglug Oberon had died six months earlier, expiring of septicemia shortly after the extraction of an abscessed tooth.
        "Dead!" said Brod. "Dead, is he? He didn't look very dead to me!"
        "Shush," said Atlanta
        "Well," said Tulip, "if he is dead, and, I mean, all the paperwork's in order, so, so if he is dead, then maybe what you've got is a doppelganger."
         This was so fatuous as to require no refutation. While Chalakanesia's metapsychic faultline was perfectly capable of generating ghosts and doppelgangers of all descriptions, these were always brief-lived duplicates of living subjects.
         The accepted wisdom of Chalakanesia was that corpses did not ghost. And, furthermore, it was virtually unheard of for the ghost of any living person to survive for as long as six months. This made it almost certain that Eglug Oberon was still alive, and, in all probability, the solid and persistent assassin who had been taken into custody was the very man himself, rather than any spurious duplicate.
        "We do have Oberon," said Atlanta. "This means he didn't die. Let's see the death certificate. And the disposal certificate!"
         These documents were produced.
         The body had been certified dead by a certain Doctor Jam Satu Sebelas, and had been buried by an orderly named Nanji Plumdekarus Clock. On further investigation, it was found that Doctor Sebelas was a native of Hell who had taken himself home to Chan Molest some three months earlier, and orderly Clock was a citizen of Heaven who had just recently fled to Sakura Amir, leaving in his wake two illegitimate children, a bigamous marriage, a trail of debts and an unpaid fine for being drunk and disorderly.
        "So," said Atlanta, "one bunks to Heaven and one to Hell."
        "You can't prove that," said Heineman. "You're more or less alleging conspiracy, and we've no proof of that."
        "Proof!" said Atlanta, waving a fistful of documents. "Who's the lawyer here? I'll tell you what's proof! Eglug Oberon, that's what's proof! Six months missing, which means someone fed him for six months, sheltered him, trained him, aimed him, and made sure they were out of the way when he made his hit. Heineman, the doctor was in it, so was the orderly, and there could be as many as a dozen others with them."
         Reluctantly, Heineman had to assent to that. The city of Lexis was a small place. It had no seething crowds in which one could get anonymously lost for months at a time. It had some fairly dubious slums where all kinds of notorious activities went on, but men like Bullock and Brod had been born in those slums, knew everything which went on inside them, and would have identified Oberon already if he had recently been there.
         Atlanta said as much, then said:
        "As I said, there has to be a conspiracy."
        "Well," said Brod, who had been following all this in silence. "That's easy then, isn't it? Let's go beat the trumps out of this Oberon. Bullock? Where are you, man!"
        "No!" said Atlanta. "You are not, repeat, not, you are absolutely not to beat anyone."
        "Why not?" said Brod truculently. "As I see it, this assassin fellow has got it coming to him."
        "So he has," said Atlanta, whose notions of mercy would have well fitted the villain of a vampire comic, "but his health wouldn't stand it. We'll go back down to the Salsa Soko Pelchis and question him gently."
         With that good intention, they left the records office, reclaimed Bullock — whom they found wristwrestling with a convicted dog-murderer — and set off back to the Presidential Mansion.
        "I wonder," said Heineman, "how he ever got up the sewer in the first place. You know, it's filthy as hell down there, he's not one of us, he doesn't have any gills. As for adaptive skins, I don't think a skin would have suffered it. You know what? I bet he had scuba gear, I just bet. If the Gulf and the Chasms were mixed up in this, they could have got him that stuff, easily. You know, that sewer runs for ages, but if he had scuba gear, he could have found it easily enough. It vents to the sea, there's a big pipe, there's — "
        "Heineman," said Atlanta, dismayed to hear her brother babbling in front of Bullock and Brod. "Save it till we get down to the hill."
         So Heineman shut up, and concentrated on working out what new questions they would put to Eglug Oberon, and what they might do to stir him to answer if he continued to stay silent.
         But, by the time they got down to the Salsa Soko Pelchis, the assassin Eglug Oberon was dead.