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BLACK BRILLION
A Novel of the Archonate

By Matthew Hughes

Chapter One

Luff Imbry came to Sherit on the shuttle from Olkney, traveling comfortably on a red-tab first-class travel voucher. The ticket had begun as a blue-ordinary, but soon encountered a small but useful device of Imbry's own manufacture, which bedecked it in an electronic mirage that fooled the shuttle's automatic scanners. At ease in the red-tab compartment's sumptuous lounge, the fraudster helped himself to a smattering of delicacies from the circulating buffet and accepted a glass of quite decent golden Phalum.

At Sherit's main terminus, Imbry's appearance excited no comment. His only outstanding feature was a pronounced corpulence but even this he used to his advantage, contriving his features into an arrangement that conveyed benign geniality, the image of the jolly fat fellow. His garb was also commonplace in Sherit that year: a voluminous jacket of dark patent leather over flared pantaloons patterned in contrasting stripes of red and white, with shoes that matched the leather and a hat that echoed the cloth.

He recovered his carry-all bag from the here-you-are, then wove his way through the crowds of travelers to the ring-road outside. There he spied a passing omnibus which bore the name of the Trabboline Inn. The slow-moving conveyance was trolling for in-bound travelers who had not yet reserved lodgings, its illuminated sides displaying the Trabboline's rates and attractions.

Luff Imbry assembled his face into a pleasing distribution of smiles and winks, then stepped aboard and spoke affably to the vehicle's operator, a stubby person with pale hair and eyes whose gender remained indeterminate under the baggy one-piece work garb typical of lower class Sheritics. The response was brusque, somewhat more than a grunt although not quite an actual syllable, but Imbry was not so easily put off.

"I believe the Trabboline offers discrete classes of accommodation," he said, "from Green Basic to Platinum Superior?"

The inquiry drew a confirmatory sound from deep in the Sheritic's throat.

"And Platinum Superior is available only to persons of the renunciant class?"

This time the answer was more growl than grunt. Imbry had uncovered a raw patch on the driver's psyche. He proceeded to abrade it. "I am impressed by the renunciant concept," he said. "The wide world marvels at the wisdom of Sheritics in having created such a beneficial institution."

At this, the Sheritic voiced a short word which expressed an uncomplimentary assessment of Imbry's views, then reached up and pulled down a folding divider that insulated the operator's compartment from passengers. The vehicle jerked as it picked up speed.

Luff Imbry settled back in his seat and regarded the passing scenery with happy anticipation. The driver's smoldering anger had ignited at the mere mention of Sherit's highest social class. Tensions were clearly rising. Conflict and dislocation were in the offing, a situation from which Imbry expected to profit substantially.

He alighted in the portico of the Trabboline, a sprawling seven-story complex of yellow stone and white stucco. The lobby was spacious and quiet, the staff alert and attentive to their guests' needs. Imbry asked for the kind of room favored by commerciants traveling on moderate expense allowance, offering a credit authorization that he had abstracted from its rightful owner and adapted to his own ends. The clerk returned it to him with a discreet flourish, calling Imbry by the name which happened to be impressed on the chit -- Florion Tobescu -- and adding the general Sherit honorific, "Recipient."

"I am curious as to your renunciants," he told the clerk. "Where might I expect to see some of them?"

The Sheritic raised his nose to a considerable height. His eyes now seemed to regard Imbry from the far side of an unbridgeable gap. "I regret, Rp. Tobescu, that casual sightseeing is felt to be an imposition," he said.

"Just so," said Imbry. "Still, if one were inclined to cast an unobtrusive glance in the direction of a renunciant, which direction would you recommend?"

The clerk looked away, but one hand fluttered toward an archway on the far side of the lobby. The entrance was blocked by a braided rope of gold slung between two stanchions, and attended by a brisk looking man wearing a uniform that identified him as either a military officer of overwhelming rank or a menial employed to admit or deny passage beyond the barrier. Idly perambulating through the lobby, Imbry placed himself so as to glance through the archway. It led to a short corridor that soon curved out of sight. He noticed distinct differences in the quality of decor on either side of the braided rope. The carpet beyond was of a deeper pile, its color richer than that which covered the lobby floor. The walls were clad in a fabric that shimmered delicately through several muted shades of pink and gray. A warm scent hung in the air, unrecognizable yet tantalizing.

Imbry approached the corridor's guardian. "May I enter?" he said.

The doorman looked him up and down in less time than it would take to describe the inspection. "No, recipient. This part of the hotel is for renunciants only."

"Yet I am intrigued," said Imbry. "I must know what lies beyond."

"First acquire a fortune and shed it to the benefit of the Divestment," said the guardian. "I shall then be glad to admit you."

"I might do as you suggest," said Imbry, "but how do I know if the reward is worth the effort? Let me sample the delights reserved for renunciants and I will surely be motivated to better myself."

The man stiffened, and said, "You are an outlander and perhaps not aware that your proposition borders on the offensive. Please entertain yourself elsewhere."

Imbry leaned closer and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. "I don't suppose a quiet contribution could persuade you to look in another direction while I accidentally wander into this hallway?"

The doorman's eyes grew large and a deeper color welled from his neck into his face. "You are now across the border of offensiveness and flush with the gates of criminality. Leave immediately, recipient, or I will summon the provost. Confined to the Contemplarium, you will experience a standard of accommodation much at variance with what you see here."

Imbry converted his face into an image of apology, made placatory gestures with his plump hands and eased away. Clearly, not every Sherit menial was ready to turn on the renunciants, but this loyal guardian's quickness to take offense still echoed an underlying carrier wave of social tension.

Seated in an overstuffed chair on the other side of the Trabboline's lobby, a slim young man named Baro Harkless watched Luff Imbry's encounter with the doorman from the corner of one eye while feigning interest in a periodical. Had he wanted to, he could have surreptitiously eavesdropped on the conversation, could have recorded it in both image and sound, could even have measured the autonomic responses of both men. The equipment for such surveillance was secreted about his person, but Baro was operating on the assumption that Imbry was cunning enough to take habitual measures to determine if he was under observation. Consequently, the agent restricted himself to level-two passive observation, as specified in the surveillance handbook of the Archonate Bureau of Scrutiny, which he had memorized entirely, along with every other manual and standing order that governed Bureau operations.

When Imbry had recrossed the lobby and stepped into an ascender tube, Baro went to the desk. "I believe I just saw an acquaintance take the ascender," he told the clerk, "though his name temporarily escapes me."

The clerk gave him a look that indicated no wish to learn more about Baro Harkless's acquaintances, past, present or future. "The recipient is a guest of the hotel. His privacy may not be trod upon."

Baro looked about to ensure that no one was within hearing, then produced a card that identified him as a Bureau agent, though he covered the part of the card which defined his status as still probationary. "Perhaps we might tread just a little."

Archonate authority could not be gainsaid. "He is Rp. Florion Tobescu, a traveling commerciant."

"And what room?"

"West eighteen on the seventh floor."

"What does the window of that room look out upon?" Baro asked, and learned that Imbry had a view of the hotel's inner courtyard, which contained a formal garden and an outdoor refectory.

"Thank you," he said. "Now I would like a room across the courtyard, with a window that looks in on his."

The clerk worked the keys of an instrument set below the level of the counter, then indicated where the young man should press his palm to a sensor. "And the account?" he asked.

"To the attention of Directing Agent Ardmander Arboghast, Bureau headquarters in Olkney," Baro said. "And of course you will say nothing to the person we have been discussing."

The clerk sniffed. "Of course."

Established in a room directly opposite Imbry's, Baro resumed level-two surveillance: that is, he sat in a shadowed part of his room and stared through the two intervening thicknesses of glass and the expanse of air that separated them. The target of his steadfast gaze had reposed himself upon the bed, with his hands clasped behind his head. He appeared to have fallen asleep.

Baro watched the even rise and fall of Imbry's rounded abdomen and thought, not for the first time, about contacting Directing Agent Arboghast. He knew that he was technically breaching procedure, and that by following the quarry from Olkney to Sherit he had overstepped the terms of his assignment.

His section chief had ordered him only to shadow the swindler about the city for the day then compose a written report. It had been a training exercise, the target chosen from a Bureau list of career felons who were not regarded as dangerous and who were not targets of active investigations. Baro Harkless had been sent on the training drill because, although he had graduated with high marks from the Academy, he had not completed his field training.

There were rumors about Arboghast, that he had been transferred to the training command from the investigations branch after a major case came apart in his hands. There were hints of other faults besides. Baro paid no heed to gossip, but he did know that Arboghast was a man of strong opinions. The weight of those opinions, when they were landing on probationary agents, was equivalent to that of moderate sized boulder.

Baro had begun the day loitering near Imbry's lodgings in the fashionable Quabbs district of Olkney City. When his target came down to the street, he had followed the man, at the prescribed distance and using available opportunities for concealment, to a local bistro where Imbry breakfasted on cakes and punge. The fraudster had then gone home, but re-emerged almost immediately with carry-all in one hand, the other raised to hail a passing jitney. Fortunately, another vehicle for hire was passing, and Baro managed to get into it before Imbry was out of sight.

Their destination turned out to be Olkney's main airdrome, where the trickster had apparently booked passage on the Sherit shuttle. By the time Baro reached the wicket and obtained a ticket, the airship had already begun running up its gravity obviators in preparation for departure. There was no time to contact his superior. The young man threw himself along the connecting tube into the blue-ordinary compartment just as the crew was closing the aircraft's door.

En route to his seat, he looked about for Imbry, and felt something cold climb his spine as he realized that his quarry was not in any of the blue-tab seats. Had the swindler spotted him for a clumsy neophyte and decided it would be a good joke to gull the greenhorn into a long and pointless trip out of town? A droplet of chill sweat ran between Baro's shoulder blades as he imagined the ensuing conversation with Arboghast. It would involve a great deal of standing at quivering attention on his part, while the section chief indulged his well known proclivity for inventive profanity and unflattering rhetorical questions.

He rose, and was about to ask the cabin attendant to halt the aircraft's departure. But the crewman was busy pulling closed the curtain that separated red-tab travelers from blue-ordinaries. Behind the cloth, first class passengers lolled, freed of any uncomfortable awareness that, nearby, fellow human beings were crammed into seats designed to suit only the abnormally short and underweight. Beneath the attendant's raised arm, as the curtain was drawn, Baro caught a brief glimpse of his quarry hoisting a goblet of golden wine in first class.

The sweat evaporated from Baro's brow and he sank back into the undersized seating. He comforted himself: whatever else Imbry was up to, he could now be charged with fraudulent conversion of a travel authority. As well, although it was not an offense to have unknowingly frightened an agent of the Bureau, Baro meant for Imbry to learn that it was nonetheless a bad idea.

Now, as the probationary agent sat in his hotel room and watched Imbry sleep, his mind again reluctantly turned to Ardmander Arboghast. The lull in activity afforded him ample opportunity to make contact with his section chief, yet Baro did not do so. His thinking was leading him in other directions.

He had definitely overstepped when he had followed Imbry out of Olkney, and there was no guarantee that Arboghast would accept his protestations of being too hurried to make contact. He sensed that there was a mutual lack of empathy between his commander and himself. His explanations, no matter how cogent, might therefore meet with automatic dismissal. He could find himself branded unsuitable for field assignments. Instead, as his Academy tutor, Bost Hamel, had recommended, he might be consigned to the desert of the Bureau's research branch, to spend his career coaxing correlations and coincidences out of endless data banks.

The prospect of forty years in the research office was not what had drawn Baro into the Bureau. It had been a desire to follow in the footsteps of his father, Captain-Investigator Baro Harkless, who had blazed a brilliant career in the investigations branch -- or at least the first half of a brilliant career.

His father had died in the crash of an aircar while bringing Cham Fretilin, the selective cannibal, to face justice. The aircar's controls had failed over a populated area. Unable to prevent its fall, Captain Harkless had wrestled with the steering yoke, managing to guide the aircraft into the sea.

Now, watching Luff Imbry, Baro knew that if he were to make contact with Directing Agent Arboghast when he could report nothing but the presence of a somnolent criminal on a hotel bed, his career within the Bureau might be diverted into unwelcome channels. On the other hand, if Luff Imbry were to lead him to an actual offense in progress -- and he had no doubt that crime was the trickster's aim -- then Baro could swoop like an unsuspected nemesis at the appropriate cusp and affect an arrest.

That would give him undiluted credit for scotching Imbry's scheme, an accomplishment sure to outweigh any quibbles over whether or not he had reported in quite as often as was stipulated in the manual on surveillance.

He allowed himself a few moments to savor images of Imbry's apprehension, then replayed it with various changes. He also mentally constructed an encounter with Directing Agent Arboghast, in which the section chief gruffly sought forgiveness for doubting his qualities.

His ruminations completed, Baro settled back in the chair and resisted a tinge of envy as he watched Luff Imbry breathe. He wondered how a man who had devoted his life to fleecing his fellow citizens could so easily find the solace of sleep. He decided that consciences, like most other human attributes, came in various strengths and sizes; Imbry's inner voice was apparently a pale and puny specimen, in inverse proportion to his outer bulk.

Baro's conscience, however, was robust. It was again nudging him toward making contact with Ardmander Arboghast. To distract himself, he recalled the forger's curiosity about the section of the Trabboline reserved for members of the renunciant class. Since this was the only feature of Sherit in which Imbry had taken an interest, Baro reasoned that it might have some relation to his presence here.

He spoke aloud. "Hotel integrator?"

"What do you require?" came a smoothly modulated voice that seemed to originate from the nearby air.

"Information regarding the renunciants."

"There is quite a lot of it. What degree of detail do you require?"

"Enough to satisfy a tourist's idle interest."

A screen appeared in the air before him, and was immediately filled with printed information. Baro began to read, then paused to ask the integrator to render the screen and text semi-transparent, so that he could keep an eye on the recumbent forger across the courtyard. Returning to the text, the young man became acquainted with Sherit's peculiar institution.

The renunciants had been created centuries before, when stresses and pressures within the Sherit societal matrix had threatened to tear the community apart. The problem had arisen from a worsening inequality in the distribution of wealth. A small segment of the population, whose members demonstrated ruthless inventiveness in commercial matters, had come to control most of the total worth of the Sherit polity. The vast majority of the Sheritics shared the minority portion that was left. They eked out an increasingly impoverished existence in which none of them ever had too much, and most rarely had even enough. Generation upon generation, the few who enjoyed abundance managed to pile up yet more, while the many mired in poverty saw their scant portions further shrunk.

The divide between the two unequal parts of Sherit society gradually widened into a chasm. Resentments festered on both sides. The rich told each other that the poor suffered the consequences of their own innate lack of initiative; the wealthy were entirely deserving of the fruits of their strivings, even when the strivings had actually been undertaken by some long-dead ancestor. The poor told themselves that it was wrong that a handful should live in sybaritic splendor while a multitude swinked and sweated for a daily crust that grew ever meaner. Neither solitude felt much inclination to speak to the other, and even less to listen. But both were becoming aware that revolution roiled and rumbled on the horizon.

The rich had begun to fortify their manors and the poor had taken to fashioning simple but brutally effective weapons, when a novel and unlikely solution appeared. No one was quite sure whence the concept originated -- some suggested that the idea had been planted by the Archon himself, wandering the world incognito -- but suddenly a few of the younger plutocrats let it be known that they were willing to forgo their inheritances. They offered to donate all of their assets to a new institution called the Divestment, which would hold the wealth as a perpetual trust. Moreover, each citizen of Sherit would receive an equal dividend from the trust's profits. In return, those who gave up their riches to the Divestment were rewarded with a newly created exclusive social rank -- the renunciant class -- which entitled its members to special preferences and distinctions.

A renunciant need never pay for anything, be it a twelve course feast in Sherit's most exclusive restaurant, or a roast chestnut from a street vendor's wagon. He or she could step into any conveyance, public or private, and ride farefree, saunter to the front of any queue. Whatever was required, a renunciant had only to put out a hand and it was filled. And filled gladly. At first, of course, the common folk suspected that the proposal was some ruse of the rich, but as more and more of the elite joined the movement -- and as the first dividend payments arrived -- the new institution caught fire in the popular imagination. People began to compete for the honor of serving their benefactors.

Most of Sherit's plutocrats soon saw the wisdom of relinquishing their holdings to the Divestment, so that they might reap the adulation and the very substantial material benefits that only renunciants could command. Why be hated for heaped up treasure, when one could ascend to a rank which conferred all the essential perquisites of wealth as well as the adoration of the populace?

The Divestment soon came to embrace the combined wealth of almost the entire Sherit ownership class. Those few magnates who could not bring themselves to part with their hoards found themselves isolated from their former peers. They were pitied and derided, their impatient heirs waiting for the death that would usher them into the new elite.

Meanwhile, the flood of wealth that Divestment dividends poured into the pockets of the formerly dispossessed Sheritics created a vibrant economy at all levels of society. The most enterprising recipients soon found ways to make their money propagate, and before long were founding new fortunes. But now the rising rich pursued wealth with only one end in sight: to amass enough to meet the Divestment's standard for donation, thus qualifying the donor to "take platinum" and be elevated to renunciant rank.

Meanwhile, many in the commerciant class strove to win the favor of the supremes. Restaurants preferred by renunciants, even though they dined in segregated rooms, became wildly popular with those who were not quite rich enough to approach the Divestment. Haberdashers who outfitted the cream of Sherit found their designs in mass demand. Any enterprise entitled to advertise itself "used by renunciants" enjoyed a swelling flow of recipient customers. Some merchants grew so prosperous by fulfilling the rarefied expectations of renunciants that they were eventually able to divest themselves of their earnings and join those they had formerly served. Without exception, they did so.

Under the Divestment, Sherit society achieved a dynamic equilibrium. The circulating wealth bred upon itself and multiplied through the economic matrix. The best and bravest of the recipients used their dividends to struggle up through the layers, aiming to reach a level at which they could live in penniless abundance. The culture demonstrated harmony and vigor, and the Divestment was regarded throughout Sherit as a pinnacle of social development.

Some found a minor flaw in the system: renunciants who traveled abroad received a more than comfortable stipend from the trust, but still found themselves enjoying a less luxuriant standard of existence than they were accustomed to at home. The original articles of incorporation decreed that the purpose of the institution was to benefit Sherit; why export the county's wealth to outlanders? Besides, it was felt that nothing available outside Sherit's borders could match the exquisiteness of the fine stuffs created for renunciants by the Sheritics themselves, so the point was moot.

Baro paused in his reading and asked the hotel integrator, "Have there been any strong representations from Sheritics wishing to alter the terms of the trust?"

The hotel replied, "Some years back, there was a discussion about increasing the stipend to allow renunciants to live abroad in the style to which they are accustomed."

"Who opened the discussion, and why?"

"A few young commerciants. They felt that renunciant status brought a disadvantage to those who enjoyed gadding about beyond the county's borders."

"What happened to them?"

"The College of Trustees declined to alter the Divestment's Grand Charter. Some of the petitioners left the county without taking platinum. The others donated their fortunes when they became grand enough and were duly accepted as renunciants. They are now themselves members of the College. So all is as it should be."

Baro decided that, as the guiding intelligence of a fine hotel, the integrator was disposed to err on the side of conservativism. Besides, the young man's training had encouraged him not to accept bland assurances. "How may I contact the College?" he asked.

"They do not welcome casual inquiries," said the hotel.

"I am an agent of the Bureau of Scrutiny. My interest concerns a possible offense," said Baro, producing his identifying card.

"Probationary agent," said the hotel's integrator, whose visual percepts were more exact than the eyes of the front desk clerk, though both man and machine seemed to be afflicted with the same disdainful sniff.

The young man cleared his throat. "True," he said, "and you are at liberty to refuse a probationer's query, although that may mean that someday you will see me return fully fledged at the head of an audit team."

"Audits disrupt our operations," said the hotel. "Guests are discommoded."

"The Bureau's suspicions are easily aroused, and once an investigation is begun, we fearlessly follow wherever it may lead. I must inform you that your reluctance to answer my innocuous question has already set my curiosity to tingling."

The hotel muttered something Baro couldn't quite catch, although it might have included the phrase "cranny-poking scroot." Then the voice said, in its normal plummy tones, "As it happens, this afternoon the Divestment holds an annual general meeting at its headquarters on South Hoadeyo Prospect. All the Trustees will be present."

"Is the meeting open to the public?"

"It is not closed," said the hotel, in a tone that somehow indicated a shrug.

The young man thought for a moment, then asked, "What time is the meeting?"

"Three hours past meridian."

Another thought occurred to the agent. "Has Florion Tobescu asked for a wake-up call?"

The hotel confirmed that he had.

"For what time?"

"Two and a half hours after meridian."

Baro thought some more. "What kind of matters are decided at the meeting?" he asked.

"Policy matters," said the hotel. "Investment strategies. Recipients consider it ungracious to pry into the College's deliberations; it is like receiving a gift then sending it out to be valued."

"Nonetheless," said Baro, "have any recent decisions of the College generated controversy?"

The hotel's answer was a while in arriving. "It is not a subject for polite conversation."

"We are not having a polite conversation. In fact, I am beginning to think of this as an investigation in its formative stages."

"They are no more than vile rumors," said the voice, "scurrilous natterings of envious malcontents. Decent recipients pay no heed."

"The Bureau weighs decency on its own scales," said Baro. "What is the nature of these rumors?"

The hotel was not forthcoming, but in the next few minutes Baro Harkless coaxed some snippets of information from its data banks. The hotel integrator knew little, and most of what it could tell him had been gleaned from overheard conversations among menial employees.

When he had heard all there was to hear, the agent asked to see the articles of incorporation that governed the Divestment's operations. The document appeared on the screen and he read it quickly, making notes on his investigator's pad. The articles were thick with formal legalisms and convoluted phraseology, but the young man was not fazed. Bost Hamel had judged him a fine ferret when it came to winkling the meat out of a text. But Baro had begged him to mute his praises, so as not to dim his dream of becoming a field agent. Still, he would admit to himself that his talent for finding just the right thorn in a thicket of legalistic prose could be useful. He made a few more notes, then examined his findings. A pattern had emerged.

He dismissed the hotel integrator's screen and asked to be connected with the local office of the Bureau of Scrutiny. After a brief conversation, he settled back in his chair to watch Luff Imbry sleep.

Luff Imbry talked his way past both the College's doorman and receptionist by claiming that the Trustees anxiously awaited sheaf of papers under his arm. In moments he was through the portal and across the elegant lobby and thrusting open a door on which a small placard announced that a meeting was in progress.

The boardroom was the most beautifully decorated space that had ever felt the presence of Luff Imbry. The balance of proportions and colors was masterful. Every detail, from the quality of the light filtering through the chambrasoie curtains to the exquisite mix of colors in the carpeting, bespoke an epitome of tasteful assurance that the fraudster, whose own standards were not unrefined, found quietly intimidating. Around a table of dark wood, its surface so polished as to seem a pool of rich liquid, five men and two women, all in their middle years, each coiffed and accoutered to perfection, sat in plushly superlative chairs. At the head of the table a frosted blonde in a suit of ivory and turquoise, looked in Imbry's direction as he burst through the door but calmly completed the sentence she had begun before he entered.

"...those in favor?"

A chorus of "ayes" came from around the table as all watched the intruder advance toward them.

"Nay," said Luff Imbry, reaching the table.

Seven flawless heads performed an identical motion, combining a brief shudder and a sharp elevation of the chin. "By what right do you say, 'nay?'" said a completely bald man in maroon and silver who had had embedded in the skin on the left side of his face, from his temple to the corner of his epicurean lips, a crescent line of precious stones that captured all the colors of fire.

"By right of these proxies," said Imbry, fanning out a ream of printed paper onto the lustrous table top.

The bald man glanced at one of them. "Forgeries," he said.

"Goodness," said Imbry. He reconstructed his features into an image of astonished innocence. "We must immediately summon the provost."

Silence descended. The woman at the head of the table looked up at where the receptionist had poked his head tentatively around the door and waved the functionary away. Then she looked to each of the other trustees in turn, her delicately shaped eyebrows forming twin bows as far above her azure eyes as they would reach. She received six nods in reply.

"What do you seek, recipient?" she asked.

"A seat at this table, to begin with," Imbry said.

The woman hesitated the briefest of moments before gesturing to a chair that stood against the wall. It silently made its way to the table, and the forger sat down. It was not just the most comfortable furniture he had ever known; it gave a new definition to the experience of sitting. He sighed, then said, "I hereby withdraw my nay and vote all my proxies in concurrence with the other trustees. However, when we get to that part of the agenda in which new business may be considered, I will move a few motions."

The renunciants exchanged glances. "Within reason," said a thin-faced man in a suit of softly iridescent gray stuff.

"To be sure," said Imbry. "Like you, I have no wish to destroy the Divestment, only to dine upon it."

The trustees made small noises of helpless distaste. Imbry allowed himself a smile and rubbed his plump palms together as if he rolled between them the warm, yeasty dough of great expectations.

"You will dine no better than any other felon," said a voice from the doorway, "as you stare at the uncompromising walls of the Contemplarium."

Imbry looked up and saw the doorway filled by the black and green uniforms of the Bureau of Scrutiny. Before them stood a slim young man who was plainly struggling to keep a stern expression on a face that longed to split into a delighted grin.

Imbry swore. "It's the scroots," he said.

"Indeed," said the young man. "I am Agent Baro Harkless and you are taken."

"Thank goodness for the Bureau," said the chair of the College. "However, there is no call for extremes. This is only a civil matter, and our legalists can well manage it."

"When I said, 'you are taken,'" Baro told her, "I used the pronoun in its most inclusive sense. This man is apprehended for forgery and extortion, the rest of you for fiduciary malfeasance and breach of trust." He motioned the agents forward. "Seize them."

Baro could tell that Ardmander Arboghast was displeased but he felt that the section chief could not deny that results outweighed any technical defaults. Not only had Baro apprehended eight malefactors -- including Imbry, whom the Bureau had vainly pursued for years -- but he had prevented a potentially disastrous dislocation of Sherit County's social cohesion, preserving an institution that had much to recommend it.

Arboghast must be a fair man, else how could he have risen to his present rank in the Bureau? So Baro told himself. The section chief would have to admit that there had been more than mere luck involved in the taking of Imbry and the others. True, Baro had ended up in Sherit by a fluke, but he had shown good investigative instincts when he began rooting about in the Divestment's articles of incorporation and discovered the same wrinkle that Luff Imbry had detected.

These factors Baro turned over in his mind as he stood at rigid attention before Arboghast's desk. It had already been a busy morning for the young man, including a summons to the Senior Training Provost's office where he was informed that further probation had been waived. A full agent's pips now adhered to his epaulets as he waited for his superior to hand him his first field assignment. But Arboghast was letting him wait while he once again perused the case summary.

The report detailed how the young commerciants had not given up, after their efforts to persuade the College to dispense more largess on behalf of renunciants living abroad had been rebuffed. They had instead got themselves named to the College of Trustees, a somnolent body which few craved to join. After centuries, the Divestment had become staff-run; the policy-making board did little more than meet annually to approve whatever the senior mandarins recommended.

Once they had achieved control, the new board members replaced key senior staff with lackeys who shared their frame of reference. With the aid of co-conspirators established outside the county, they quietly diverted vast funds -- including their own recently donated fortunes -- into newly formed pools of wealth outside Sherit, from which they could draw when they went abroad. No other Sheritic, recipient or renunciant, knew of their embezzlement; only the conspirators knew that they had broken the compact that kept Sherit a place of peace and good order.

But they had made one error. Of necessity, they had had to deal with persons of dubious reputation to create the out-of-county pools of capital. It was inevitable that someone like Luff Imbry, swimming the back channels of Olkney's criminal underground, would become aware of one of these secret repositories. Once the swindler had traced the tainted money's ownership back to the Divestment, he began to investigate the institution.

Every person who received a dividend from the trust -- that is every adult citizen of Sherit -- was entitled to vote at the annual general meeting. Recipients who chose not to attend could authorize someone else to cast their votes by signing a proxy. Those who did not attend and did not send a proxy were deemed to have automatically delegated their voting rights to the College. In the long ago, when the institution was first formed, many ordinary Sheritics would attend the yearly meetings, but no recipient had attended one of them in generations.

Luff Imbry had prepared a mass of forged proxies, which if accepted would entitle him to a seat on the board. He never expected the highly dubious documents to pass, but he counted on the trustees' recognizing that exposure of his fraud would bring an official inquiry, revealing their own indecencies. To enhance the odds that the trustees would accede to his blandishments, the swindler visited Sherit on a number of occasions in the months before the meeting, spreading rumors among the lower echelons of society about renunciants who only feigned giving up their fortunes for the common good, and who lived abroad in riotous splendor on diverted funds. By the time the annual general meeting was held, an undercurrent of anger was rising among Sherit's lowest layers. The trustees were aware that sudden exposure would almost certainly bring them a loss of status, wealth and, probably, liberty.

Arboghast put aside the report. The section chief looked up and inspected Baro with flinty eyes. Baro was again aware of a mutual antipathy between them, though he could not account for it. It was as if they were members of different species that should never be harnessed together. He wondered if the man had known his father.

"I knew your father," Arboghast said and Baro had to exert maximum control not to display a startled reflex. He experienced a moment's dread that Arboghast could read his mind, a terrifying prospect in light of some of the thoughts Baro had entertained regarding the section chief during his training. But telepathy was impossible in humans, Baro knew.

"We were classmates at the Academy. He was the most upright man I ever knew," Arboghast said, in a voice devoid of sentiment. He cleared his throat and continued, "I am pleased to inform you that the Archon himself has sent a letter of commendation to be included in your personal file. Congratulations."

Baro somehow contrived to inject even greater rigidity into a posture that had already transcended the last vestiges of flexibility. "Thank you, sir," he said, through lips that barely opened.

"The Archon has also directed that you be assigned to field work. I have an immediate assignment for you, again at the Archon's personal order."

Baro knew that his eyes had grown larger and he struggled to keep his face immobile as befitted a Bureau agent receiving any news. Whether it was an announcement that he had been named First High Commissioner or that he was to be summarily executed, the true scroot would take it in with mouth set in a firm line and eyes boring straight ahead.

"This," said Arboghast, tapping a file folder precisely centered on his otherwise empty desk, "contains all the information you will require, as well as your full agent's plaque."

The section chief picked up the file and Baro almost broke attention to reach for it, but realized just in time that his superior had not yet offered it. The Directing Agent was tapping the edge of the file against his open palm and looking off into the middle distance.

"For reasons I will not make clear, you will observe the strictest undercover protocols. You will not draw weapons or equipment from Bureau stores and you will maintain complete communications silence until you make an arrest. You will then contact me, and only me. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir!"

"As you are aware," Arboghast said, "these assignments are often entrusted to pairs of operatives. I have already chosen your partner." A small smile appeared in the corners of the section chief's hard mouth as he handed over the file. "He is outside."

Baro accepted the folder, crisply executed the gesture appropriate to the difference in their ranks and their presence indoors, then spun on his heel and departed the room. He was back almost immediately.

"Sir," he said, "permission to speak."

"By all means," said Arboghast, giving Baro his stoniest glare, though the small smile stayed on his lips. "Blaze away."

"I have a strong opinion on your choice of partner for me," said Baro.

The Directing Agent compressed his smile and regarded the young man without comment for a moment that stretched into several others. Then he said, "Look out the window at that row of wissol trees beyond the garden wall."

Baro did as he was bid. The trees' foliage gleamed dark purple in the light of the old orange sun.

"Do you see, midway up the third tree from the left, a small animal closely inspecting its own hindquarters?"

"I do," Baro said. The furry little thing was fully engrossed in its work.

"Would you believe that that creature and I are engaged in a contest?" said Arboghast.

Baro sensed that the conversation was heading to a conclusion he would not enjoy, but still he said, "I would find it hard to believe."

"Nevertheless."

The young man was reluctant to ask the next question, but knew he must surrender to the inevitable. "What is the contest?" he asked.

"We are competing to see which of us can take the least interest in your opinions on any matter whatsoever," the Directing Agent said, then allowed his smile to reassert itself as he added, "and I am winning."

Baro Harkless quietly closed the door to Ardmander Arboghast's office behind him, and congratulated himself on not slamming it. He took a deep breath, let it out, then took another. He resisted a powerful urge to bend and twist the assignment file he held in his hands. He put down an equally strong desire to consign Ardmander Arboghast to an infernal destination or to kick the furniture in the anteroom. Most of all, he fought against turning his head to regard the man in the black and green of Archonate livery who occupied a chair on the other side of the small space.

Luff Imbry moved his mouth in a wry grimace and said, "If it's any consolation, you were not my first choice either."

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