"Good god, Colonel! What a terrible experience that must have been for her! A squad of Klestronu marines! Then what?"

"I took her to headquarters base, where she was cleaned up and sent to the flagship for questioning. I never saw or heard of her again till our return to Klestron."

"I see. Why was she brought to Klestron? It was my understanding that she'd lost her memory in an interrogation accident. Surely they didn't expect to get any information from her after that."

"It was never clear to me why they took her with them."

"Can't you even think of a reason they might have taken this lovely female captive with them?"

"I prefer not to speculate."

"How did you come to encounter her again on Klestron?"

"That was pure chance. I discovered that she was being held prisoner by a group of intelligence agents."

"Held prisoner?! Were there any other prisoners?"

"None. They'd been keeping her in a room alone. In a small apartment, actually. Fairly comfortable but with no privacy whatsoever. She was watched constantly, day and night, by hidden cameras. It was quite scandalous, because over a period of days, what had begun as ordinary security monitoring had degenerated into voyeurism, if not something worse. She being such a remarkably attractive and vulnerable young woman.

"When I learned of the situation, I at once felt a certain responsibility for her safety. Because I was the one who'd transported her to headquarters in the first place. So I had her removed, and my wife took her to her father's estate. Shortly after that, the Kalif had her brought here to Varatos."

"Where he apparently found her as attractive as all the others had. How did you avoid her attractions?"

"It wasn't easy."

"Were there a lot of these beautiful female soldiers on the Confederation world?"

"Actually she was as unusual there, in her beauty, as she is here. And I never saw or heard of any other female soldier there. Not one."

"Remarkable. Truly remarkable. Why just this one beautiful woman, I wonder.

"Now, Colonel, I have some more personal questions to ask you. Frankly, I've heard that there was a lapse of several days between the time you took the now kalifa from the room the intelligence agents were holding her in, and the time your wife took her away. Isn't that so?"

"That's not true!"

"And isn't it also true that your wife asked the Kalif for a writ of divorcement from you?"

"I refuse to answer that."

"Are you now married to your wife?"

"No. No, I'm not. She-thought I'd been unfaithful to her."

"Why would she think that?"

"She said-she said that Tain, now the kalifa, had told her I'd-taken advantage of her."

"But you hadn't?"

"I hadn't."

"Why would she have said that if it wasn't true? And why would the Kalif grant your wife a divorce? Adultery by the husband isn't grounds for divorce. Grounds for punishment, yes, for amends to the wife, and reparations to her family if they ask for them, but not divorce. Do you suppose a divorce could have been part of an agreement to keep your wife from making public what the kalifa told her about you?"

"I have no way of knowing. And anyway it wasn't a divorce. He granted her an annulment."

"An annulment?! On what grounds?!"

"You'll have to ask him. I refuse to say any more about it."

"Hmm." The interviewer turned again to the camera. "So now we know the true history of the kalifa, or some of it. A young woman victimized repeatedly, from her capture and-abuse by a squad of peasant marines to her arrival here on Varatos. But seemingly her hardships are over now. Because this lovely yellow-haired soldier, if that's what she actually was, and not something else, shares the kalifal palace with the Successor to The Prophet.

"Who seems to have made a seriously criminal agreement in order to get her into his bed. It also seems that he was not the first man to have her. He seems to have been preceded by an indeterminate number of peasant marines in a muddy field on a far off planet; an indeterminate number of fleet personnel on a bunk in a warship-and remember, that was a three-year voyage! And repeatedly by a crowd of lustful intelligence officers in a room on Klestron.

"That of course is just since we've known of her. What had her function been in the enemy army? This solitary young woman with such sexual magnetism. Surely she wasn't a soldier. The evidence is that the enemy had no female soldiers. The soldiers they did have didn't let themselves be taken alive, yet she surrendered-perhaps because surrendering was what she was used to doing.

"One may be forgiven for wondering if, in fact, the writer of The Kalif's -excuse me- The Sultan's Bride was more correct than we imagined.

"At least the sultan in the story performed no acts of criminal collusion in bedding his prisoner. Nor did he knowingly disregard Church Law and the specific command of The Prophet in marrying her. Nor did he murder a delegate to the House of Nobles who'd publicized the nature of his bride.

"I recommend that you resist the wishes of this immoral, this disgraceful Kalif, and do all in your power to have him deposed. I also urge you to copy this cube in quantities, if you have access to equipment, and give the copies to others.

"Perhaps we might put him and his bride on a small hyperspace ship and send them outward to the Confederation by themselves, keeping our young men home and alive, and the fruits of our labor here where we can have the use of them."

The speaker bowed, and the picture faded slowly to deep indigo, then black. For a minute no one spoke. Then the Kalif unclenched his jaw and turned to Veeri. "I presume you can lead us to the place where this was made?"

"Indeed I can, Your Reverence."

The Kalif sat staring at him, his hot gaze cooling, growing thoughtful. "Colonel, why did you bring me this cube? Surely you have no love for me."

"You're right, Your Reverence, I don't. But neither do I hate you, though perhaps I did once. The kalifa is a very beautiful young woman. Through no fault of her own. And she was indeed very vulnerable, again through no fault of her own. I speak from experience when I say I appreciate how a man can be smitten by her loveliness, and do what he would not ordinarily do.

"So I can understand how you might have done to me what you did. As for why I brought this here"-he gestured toward the terminal, and the cube in it-"instead of destroying it…" He paused, then continued. "I'm in favor of an invasion. I've seen a beautiful world scarcely used by the people there. I would like to go with the invasion force, take part in the conquests, be part of the occupation. I'd like to have a fief of my own there, a land fief. Not on Terfreya-not necessarily-but on some world there. So in my own interest, I would not sabotage either you or your invasion."

He sat back then, waiting.

"Ah. Well. A fief can be arranged." The Kalif spoke the words absently, as if his attention had gone to something else. "Colonel, the things you said in the interview, about Tain…"

"Sir, I am confident the intelligence agents hadn't abused her, although they might well have before long. The opportunity and temptation were there. I also doubt that anything happened to her aboard the flagship. She was undoubtedly in stasis most of the trip, and the commodore had a reputation as a hard, strict old man. His officers would have considered the prospect of being tried before him and jettisoned out a trash port. And if the marines had-used her on the battlefield, she'd have been more than 'bruised and confused.'

"Concerning her role with the enemy army-We know nothing of the Confederation's military practices away from the battlefield. There may well be administrative functions which women carry out, as they do in our own fleet. We do know that women carry out administrative functions in civil government there.