Dors got as far as the palace high vestibule. There the Imperial Guard turned her back.

“Damn it, she’s my wife,” Hari said angrily.

“Sorry, it’s a Peremptory Order,” the bland court official said. Hari could hear the capital letters. The phalanx of Specials around Hari did not intimidate this fellow; he wondered if anyone could.

“Look,” he said to Dors, “there’s a bit of time before the meeting. Let’s eat a bit at the High Reception.”

She bristled. “You’re not going in?”

“I thought you understood. I have to. Cleon’s called this meeting-”

“At Lamurk’s instigation.”

“Sure, it’s about this Dahlite business.”

“And that man I knocked down at the reception, he might have been instigated to do it by-”

“Right, Lamurk.” Hari smiled. “All wormholes lead to Lamurk.”

“Don’t forget the Academic Potentate.”

“She’s on my side!”

“ She wants the ministership, Hari. All the rumor mills say so.”

“She can damn well have it,” he grumbled.

“I can’t let you go in there.”

“This is the palace.” He swept his arm at the ranks of blue-and-gold in the vast portal. “Imperials all around.”

“I do not like it.”

“Look, we agreed I’d try to bluster past-and it failed, just as I said. Fair enough. You would never pass the weapons checks, anyway.”

Her teeth bit delicately into her lower lip, but she said nothing. No humaniforrn could ever get through the intense weapons screen here.

He said calmly, “So I go in, argue, meet you out here”

“You have the maps and data I organized?”

“Sure, chip embedded. I can read it with a triple blink.”

He had a carrychip embedded in his neck for data hauling, an invaluable aid at mathist conferences. Standard gear, readily accessed. A microlaser wrote an image on the back of the retina-colors, 3D, a nifty graphics package. She had installed a lot of maps and background on the Imperium, the palace, recent legislation, notable events, anything that might come up in discussions and protocols.

Her severe expression dissolved and he saw the woman beneath. “I just…please…watch yourself.”

He kissed her on the nose. “Always do.”

They patrolled among the legions of hangers-on who thronged the vestibule, snagging the appetizers which floated by on platters. “Empire’s going bankrupt and they can afford this,” Hari sniffed.

“It is time-honored,” Dors said. “Beaumunn the Bountiful disliked delay in consuming meals, which was indeed his principal activity. He ordered that each of his estates prepare all four daily meals for him, on the chance that he might be there. The excess is given out this way.”

Hari would not have believed such an unlikely story had it not come from an historian. There were knots of people who plainly lived here, using some minor functionary position for an infinite banquet. He and Dors drifted among them, wearing refractory vapors which muddled the appearance. Recognition would bring parasites.

“Even amid all this swank, you’re thinking about that Voltaire problem, aren’t you?” she whispered.

“Trying to figure out how somebody copied him-it-out of our files.”

“And someone had requested it, just hours before?” She scowled. “When you turned it down, they simply stole it.”

“Probably Imperial agents.”

“I don’t like it. They may be trying to implicate you further in the whole Junin scandal.”

“Still, the old anti-sim taboo is breaking down.” He toasted her. “Let’s forget it. These days, it’s either sims or stims.”

There were several thousand people beneath the sculpted dome. To test the man-woman team shadowing them, Dors led him on a random path. Hari tired rapidly of such skullduggery. Dors, ever the student of society, pointed out the famous. She seemed to think this would thrill him, or at least distract him from the meeting to come. A few recognized him, despite the refraction vapors, and they had to stop and talk. Nothing of substance was ever said at such functions, of course, by long tradition.

“Time to go in,” Dors warned him.

“Spotted the shadows?”

“Three, I think. If they follow you into the palace, I’ll tell the Specials captain.”

“Don’t worry. No weapons allowed in the palace, remember.”

“Patterns bother me more than possibilities. The assassination tab delayed detonation just long enough for you to discard it. But it did make me wary enough to attack that professor.”

“Which got you banned from the palace.” Hari completed the thought. “You’re giving people a lot of credit for intricate maneuvers.”

“You haven’t read very much history of Imperial politics, have you?”

“Thank God, no.”

“It would only trouble you,” she said, kissing him with sudden, surprising fervor. “And worry is my job.”

“I’ll see you in a few hours,” Hari said as casually as he could manage, despite a dark premonition. He added to himself, I hope.

He entered the palace proper through the usual arms checks and protocol officers. Nothing, not even a carbon knife or implosion nugget, could escape their many-snouted sniffers and squinters. Millennia before, Imperial assassination had become so common as to resemble a sport. Now tradition and technology united to make these formal occasions uniquely safe. The High Council was meeting for the Emperor’s review, so inevitably there were battalions of officials, advisors, Magisterials Extraordinary and yellow-jacketed hangers-on. Parasites attached themselves to him with practiced grace.

Outside the Lyceum was the traditional Benevolent Bountiful-originally one long table, now dozens of them, all groaning beneath rich foods.

Largess even before business meetings was mandatory, an acceptance of the Emperor’s beneficence. Passing it by would be an insult. Hari nibbled at a few oddments on his way across the Sagittarius Domeway. Noisy crowds milled restlessly, mostly in the series of ceremonial cloisters that rimmed the domeway, each cut off by acoustic curtains.

Hari stepped into a small sound chamber and found a sudden release from the din. There he quickly reviewed his notes on the Council agenda, not wanting to appear an utter rube. High Court types watched every deviation from protocol with scorn. The media, though not allowed in the Lyceum, buzzed for weeks after such meetings, reading every gaffe for its nuances. Hari hated all this, but as long as he was in the game, he might as well play.

He recalled Dors’ casual mention earlier of Leon the Libertine, who had once arranged an entire faux-banquet for his ministers. The fruit could be bitten, but then snagged the unwary guests’ teeth, which remained firmly embedded until released by a digital command. The command came, of course, only from the Emperor, after some amusing begging and groveling before the other guests. Rumors persisted of darker delights obtained by Leon from similar traps, though in private quarters.

Hari brushed through the sound curtains and into the older side halls leading to the Lyceum. His retinal map highlighted these ancient, unfashionable routes because few came this way. His entourage followed obediently, though some frowned.

He knew their sort by now. They wanted to be seen, their processional parting the crowds of mere Sector executives. Sauntering through dim halls without the jostle of the crowds did nothing for the ego.

There was a life-sized statue of Leon at the end of a narrow processional corridor, holding a traditional executioner’s knife. Hari stopped and looked at the heavy-browed man, his right hand showing thick veins where it held the knife. In his left, a crystal globe of fogwine. The work was flawless and no doubt flattering to the Emperor when sculpted. The knife was quite real enough, its double edges gleaming.

Some considered Leon’s reign the most ancient of the Good Old Days, when order seemed natural and the Empire expanded into fresh worlds without trouble. Leon had been brutal yet widely loved. Hari wanted psychohistory to work, but what if it turned into a tool to rekindle such a past?