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“How hard is this going to be?” she asked Her irritation was already fading, and herfor violence When the old hter than she’d expected

“I don’t know He’s a tight-ass, this one Isurprise You take a bunch of Martian Congressional Republic fanatics and interbreed thereater ot a few ears in place We’ll see how he reacts”

“Electronic?”

“Nope Just people who like gossip and drinking They’ll do” The old lass, his uy He’s… hungry I just don’t knohat for yet”

“Does it matter?”

He drank down the rest of the ouzo in a gulp “Of course it ry pays our bills”

“No, Ito kill hiot him a lot of exotic talcu to matter much when he’s dead”

The oldhiet a little tioing to be even uy out”

“Pernete said

The oldher to speak her mind

“You alreadythe bribe, or he turns it down and we kill him He turned it down, so noe kill him Those are the rules”

The old man scratched at his hairy, white chest Outside the , a local pigeon—six cos covered with feathery cilia—landed, chittered, and flew off again The old man smiled after it as if the interruption had broken his train of thought When he spoke, she knew it hadn’t, and that the conversation was over

“The rules,” he said, “are what I say they are”

Mona Rittenaur’s office was on the top floor of the northwest corner of the Xi-Tae as her cabin on the Notus had been, with intelligent glass froht as Auberon’s sun sped across its wide blue sky, but corrected the color to give the landscape below her a sense of greater constancy She knew fro that the illusion was supposed to make the transition to Auberon’s unfamiliar daily cycle easier, but after the first few days, she disabled the feature She wanted to see the world around her as it was

“Dr Rittenaur?” a woman’s voice said from the doorway, and then, belatedly, a soft knock “You wanted to see me?”