Ockham Saneer owns only one suit which their spouse Lesley may not doodle on, and it is used only for trips to La Trimouille. They met in the most secure room of the Humanist Presidential Mansion, the Treasure Cabinet: hexagonal, walled with a honeycomb of glass-faced cases containing carved stones, signet rings, miniature portraits, and curiosities both animal and mineral. Duke President Ganymede Jean-Louis de la Trémoïlle outdid the treasures, his mane as glaring as gold in sunlight, his eyes as biting as blue diamond. The ice-pale Duke expressed his displeasure by today’s choice of silks, a deep pearl color almost dark enough to be called silver, which is as grim on him as black on any other man. Ockham, beside him, with his warm Indian skin and black hair like the fertile ash after a forest fire, seemed a real, organic human being beside some icy idol.

“Member President,” Ockham greeted his Hive leader with a stiff but awkward nod, which wanted to be something more formal, but the customs of our peaceful era will not permit the honesty of a salute.

The Duke President gestured Ockham to the bench opposite his. “Why is Sniper not with you?”

“Cardigan is AWOL, Member President.”

In the crisis, the Duke did not even pause to smirk at Sniper’s middle name. “AWOL?”

“They disappeared from their gym this morning sometime between 11:14 and 11:40 UT. We believe it was a kidnapping.”

“What?”

Ockham would not have showed his fear. “Lesley has our Humanist Special Guard investigating, but I thought it best not to report the incident to Romanova yet. It may turn out to be one of Cardigan’s fans, unrelated to the Black Sakura affair.”

“How could you let this happen now?” The accusation came from Chief Director Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi. He paced the tiny room, agitated steps making his spring-patterned Mitsubishi suit rustle, as if a fox were stalking through its pattern of night-darkened bamboo.

“My apologies, Chief Director,” Ockham answered crisply. “There were holes in my security.”

“That’s clear.” These cold words came from a fourth man, who sat tensely on a seat’s edge at the far side of the little room. “Holes named Cato Weeksbooth and Ojiro Cardigan Sniper.”

Ganymede’s blue eyes flashed murder. “You will not denigrate what Sniper does for us, Perry. They are our bulwark in this, as is Ockham.”

Perry held his tongue. This the first time you have seen him take the stage, “the Outsider” as you have heard the others call him at Madame’s, Europe’s Second-Choice Prime Minister, Casimir Perry. He has spent these past days busy in Europe’s capital at Brussels, securing friends, flattering neutrals, and bargaining with the opposition that gnaws forever at the roots of his tender coalition. When the King of Spain was the European Hive’s Prime Minister, His Majesty kept the peace among the member nation-strats with grace, relying on the general goodwill that others give the man who has been so good to them, his father so good to their fathers, his grandfather so good to their grandfathers. Casimir Perry they work like a workhorse. Physically he is a fine man, as tall as the Emperor, European in complexion but tanned and healthy, with a square face creased by a hundred kinds of stress, and a nub of brownish ponytail. He wears the full armband of his Polish nation-strat and finely tailored European suits, which sit well on him. Today’s is a deep mustard shade with a double-breasted coal black vest and black lapels, but his tailor’s efforts always look pathetic in the Parliamentary photos which show Perry where one’s eye expects the King. There is a strain in Perry’s voice when he speaks, making every phrase seem slightly urgent, and his hands strain too, latching on to armrests like barnacles, which conquer seas and tides only by clinging to the leviathans.