Since Black Orpheus never returned to the populated worlds of the Democracy, and Dimitri Sokol never left them, it’s only natural that he gave Sokol neither a verse nor a nickname. They never met, never crossed paths, never even knew the other existed—which was probably just as well: Black Orpheus wouldn’t have liked him much. Orpheus loved the uninhibited, colorful men and women of the Frontier; Sokol was calm, calculating, and self-controlled. Black Orpheus painted his word pictures in primaries; Dimitri Sokol was a pastel.

Sokol was a civilized man, and as such he indulged in the crimes of civilization. If a man had to be killed, his hand may have held the checkbook, but it never touched the weapon. If there was smuggling or black marketeering to be done, he put so many holding companies and middlemen between himself and his hirelings that he might as well have been on Deluros VIII itself. He craved respectability, which Black Orpheus disdained; and he disdained notoriety, which Black Orpheus dedicated his career to perpetuating.

Orpheus would have considered him a hypocrite, which is certainly one interpretation; but the truth of the matter was that Sokol managed to walk a very fine line between his deeds and his expectations with a skill that even the Bard of the Inner Frontier would have admired.

He had vacation homes on Seabright and Pollux IV, and a suite of offices—which he hadn’t visited in years—on Canphor VII. He made large donations to charity each year and had recently paid for an addition to a hospital in Pallas Athena, the oldest of Pegasus’ seven enclosed cities. He was a patron of the arts and could always be counted upon to support the local symphony orchestra and ballet with handsome contributions; he no longer donated to the opera, but it was common knowledge that he disapproved of his daughter’s liaison with one of the lead tenors, and nobody thought any the less of him for it.

He had spent most of his working hours during the past two years in his penthouse atop one of Hektor’s more desirable residential buildings. There were twelve rooms in all; nine served as the family’s residence—a son and two daughters still lived with him—and the other three rooms, with their own private entrance, had been converted into an office suite.

It was just after noon when Virtue Mackenzie presented herself in the building’s lobby, waited while a security woman announced her arrival, and then took an elevator directly to Sokol’s office suite. Upon emerging, she found herself in a small reception foyer, where a secretary told her that she was expected and ushered her into an opulently furnished study.

“He’ll join you in just a moment,” said the secretary, returning to his post by the elevator.