All the digging since then had turned up nothing more specific. Godiva was simply a woman, background and age uncertain, whom men found irresistible. She exploited that fact for money.

Looking at her now, Lotos could see why Godiva had been so successful. She moved like a dancer, every gesture natural, easy, and flowing. She had the clear eyes and skin of perfect health. She laughed easily, throwing her head back open-mouthed to reveal perfect teeth and a pink, fleshy tongue. Most of all, she listened to Lotos with total, focused attention, as though what the other woman was saying was the most interesting thing in the solar system.

And still Lotos was uneasy. Godiva had never formed more than a temporary and commercial relationship with any man — until she met Luther Brachis. And then she had formed a permanent contract with him.

True love? That was not in Lotos Sheldrake’s vocabulary of the possible. Her intuition told her that something strange was going on between Godiva Lomberd and Luther Brachis. She lacked Mondrian’s previous acquaintance with Godiva, but she trusted his instincts, too. “She is changed,” he had said, as they whipped through the Ceres transportation system on their way to the Adestis Headquarters. “Different. She wasn’t like that when she was on Earth.”

“Changed how?”

Mondrian had looked angry — with himself. Lotos knew how much he valued his ability to read out the motivations and secret desires of others. “She’s … focused,” he said at last. “You would have to have met the old Godiva to understand what I mean. It used to be that Godiva always paid close attention to the man who was buying her time, and she certainly gave him his money’s-worth. But at the same time she was aware of other men, and somehow she made them aware of her. It was like a magnetic field around her, one that said, ‘I’m busy right now. But I won’t always be busy. Sometime in the future, I could be yours.’ Of course, in practice there were conditions. Everyone wanted her, but not everyone could pay the price. But there was always that possibility, if a man were lucky enough to get rich. Now … now she pays attention to Luther. Only to Luther. The other men around her are hardly there. That’s what I mean by different.”

“Maybe it’s love,” suggested Lotos. She gave Mondrian a quick sideways look from her dark eyes.

He had not bothered to reply. Mondrian’s opinion of true love as the agent for a profound change of personality was perhaps even more cynical than Lotos Sheldrake’s.

Lotos watched now, as other men and women wandered through the lounge. Mondrian had been exactly right. Godiva would look up, as though to check that each arrival was not Luther Brachis. Then at once she returned her attention to Lotos. There was no eye contact, no trace of coquetry. Godiva flirted no more than Lotos herself did.

So. Lotos leaned back and puzzled over the evidence before her eyes. Earth’s most famous and expensive courtesan ought to be much more aware of men. Even if she no longer thought of them as prospective customers, surely the habit of speculative evaluation and subliminal come-ons would by now be built in?

Lotos had paid well for this meeting with Godiva. And it was producing more questions than answers.

Mondrian had promised Lotos a clear half-hour with Godiva. She was getting that and more, because on the way back to the lounge he stopped at the spectators’ lounge for a look at the battle area.

He stayed longer than he had originally intended. Luther Brachis and Dougal MacDougal were both in the control room, wearing their Monitor sets. Or was it more accurate to say that they were really down on the battlefield, where each of them controlled the body of a simulacrum?

The field of encounter was a small hemispherical chamber about ten feet across. A camera set into the domed roof revealed all the action to any interested observers. The usual audience would be mostly prospective players, following the whole procedure with huge interest.

When Mondrian arrived, the assault on the trapdoor spider’s lair had been in its preparatory stages. The spectators’ gallery was almost empty. There was one young woman wearing the blue worker’s uniform of a Pentecost colonist, and a tall, thin man with a full beard. He seemed more interested in the players themselves than in the quarry, the battlefield, or the simulacra.

The first close-up of the spider was daunting, even to one who never intended to play Adestis. It sat motionless at the bottom of its trap, holding in its front limbs the drained husk of a millipede. It was easy to imagine that the multiple eyes on its curved back were aware of the watchers, far above.

Mondrian stared down thoughtfully at the spider. Adestis led to real deaths, through pain and stress. If his arrangement with Skrynol for the Anabasis did not work out, and Dougal MacDougal became an impossible problem — could Adestis provide a convenient solution? How many times had it been used in the past, to get rid of a troublesome official?

Mondrian took that thought with him when he went back to Lotos Sheldrake and Godiva Lomberd. He sat down to evaluate its potential, and listened to the women’s conversation with half an ear. He had been there only a few minutes when the uproar began in the adjoining control room.

Godiva came instantly to her feet. “Luther! In there!” she cried, and dashed to the chamber door. By the time that Mondrian and Sheldrake had followed her inside she was at Luther Brachis’s side. She was supporting him and staring horrified at the scene around her.

Brachis was standing, white-faced but erect. His right forearm ended just beyond the wrist in a bloody stump. Mondrian glanced at the pools of blood and the bodies surrounding Brachis. They were beyond help. He went across to the other commander, lifted his arm, and checked the tourniquet. “No blood loss now. I don’t think much of that on the floor is yours. Take it easy. We’ll have you to the hospital in a few minutes.”

“Thanks. Sorry about the mess in here.” Brachis nodded at the wounded arm. “Injuries getting to be a bit of a habit, don’t you think?”

“It’ll grow back.”

“Yeah. Teach me not to bite my nails.” Brachis gave Godiva a death’s-head smile. “It’s all right, Goddy. Just me and Mondrian playing word games, to make sure I’m not going to pass out. Blood supply to the brain, you see.’

“Your arm — ”

“ — will be all right. Don’t worry about it. I’ll just have to sign my name left-handed for a while.”

MEMORANDUM FROM: Luther Brachis, Commander of Solar System Security.

TO: All security posts.

SUBJECT: Countermeasures for terrorist activities.

Effective immediately, the following special security measures will go into effect throughout the Inner System:

1) All travellers leaving Earth will be required to travel via Link Exit facilities. All other travel will be prohibited until further notice.

2) All travellers leaving Earth will be subjected to chromosome ID checks. ID’s will be compared with reference ID (attached). In the event of a correlation exceeding 0.95, the traveller must be detained for questioning by Central Security.

3) All off-Earth awakenings from storage facilities will be subject to direct supervision. Wakers will be subject to chromosome ID checks against reference ID. In the event of a correlation exceeding 0.95, the waker must be detained for questioning by Central Security.

4) Any traveller using Link facilities and whose appearance resembles the margrave of Fujitsu (image attached) must be detained for questioning by Central Security.

5) Any off-Earth disposition of assets from the estate of the Margrave of Fujitsu must be reported to Central Security.