Colony, the Idiot's Village? Your own brother went to Shainsa and routed out The Lisse."

"And Rakhal helped him!" Juli reminded him. "Even after he left you, he tried to keep out of things. He could[22] have told them a good deal that would hurt you, after ten years in Intelligence, you know."

[22]

I knew. It was, although I wasn't going to tell Juli this, one reason why, at the end—during that terrible explosion of violence which no normal Terran mind could comprehend—I had done my best to kill him. We had both known that after this, the planet would not hold the two of us. We could both go on living only by dividing it unevenly. I had been given the slow death of the Terran Zone. And he had all the rest.

"But he never told them anything! I tell you, he was one of the most loyal—"

Mack grunted, "Yeah, he's an angel. Go ahead."

She didn't, not immediately. Instead she asked what sounded like an irrelevant question. "Is it true what he told me? That the Empire has a standing offer of a reward for a working model of a matter transmitter?"

"That offer's been standing for three hundred years, Terran reckoning. One million credits cash. Don't tell me he was figuring to invent one?"

"I don't think so. But I think he heard rumors about one. He said with that kind of money he could bargain the Terrans right out of Shainsa. That was where it started. He began coming and going at odd times, but he never said any more about it. He wouldn't talk to me at all."

"When was all this?"

"About four months ago."

"In other words, just about the time of the riots in Charin."

She nodded. "Yes. He was away in Charin when the Ghost Wind blew, and he came back with knife cuts in his thigh. I asked if he had been mixed-up in the anti-Terran rioting, but he wouldn't tell me. Race, I don't know anything about politics. I don't really care. But just about that time, the Great House in Shainsa changed hands. I'm sure Rakhal had something to do with that.

"And then—" Juli twisted her chained hands together in her lap—"he tried to mix Rindy up in it. It was crazy, awful! He'd brought her some sort of nonhuman toy from one of the lowland towns, Charin I think. It was 

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