Tau imagined “seduction” as a ridiculous theatrical process in which one’s clothes “accidentally” fell off. “Kinda,” they said, “this doesn’t seem like good politics.…”

But Kindalana looked back at them with those serious studious eyes. “We’re Princes,” she said. “The Mbo trusts us to do our jobs. If Falcrest thinks women have special seductive powers, then I’ll take advantage of it.”

It seemed troublesome and unfair and strange to Tau. But it was also so complicated that they didn’t know how to argue.

*   *   *

COSGRAD Torrinde’s tetanus passed. For a while he suffered spasms and babbled. “I have to go,” he’d say, trying to charge out through a wall. “I have to go! Renascent told me, she told me, go out and determine by what means matter becomes meat and meat becomes flesh and flesh becomes thought! Determine the mechanism of heredity, so that I may write my law in it! I can’t fail her, I can’t, I can’t, I have to go work!”

“You’re not making sense,” Tau-indi said, patiently. They’d seen so much of Cosgrad by now that the man’s body had lost all mystique and become faintly comical. It was hard to be impressed by a man’s cock when you knew it got hard and wibbled while he slept.

He stood there panting and hunched over, grimacing at the wall. “If I don’t get the Metademe,” he said, out-and-out whining, “they’ll give it to Farrier, and all Farrier wants to do is breed plagues. Plagues and vile thoughts. He doesn’t understand eugenics, or anything else, except flattery and pageant!”

But soon Cosgrad’s muscle spasms faded away like a knot coming undone. For a few months Cosgrad was weak and biddable and profoundly apologetic. The only lingering problem was his stiff neck.

His stiff neck didn’t go away.

After a while he began to complain that his neck hurt so much he couldn’t move his knees.

Tau-indi, sitting with him, wanted to scream in frustration. They knew what would happen now, and they were afraid Cosgrad would die of it.

Meningitis hit Cosgrad harder than anything before. He contorted into shapes like the letters of an underwater alphabet. He fought with dreams. When they gave him frogsweat and everything else they had, the dreams only got worse. He stared at Tau-indi with red-rimmed eyes and hissed, “What are you? How do they make you? Tell me how!”

“Me?”

“Tell me how they made you!”

“I came from my mother and father.…”

“And where did they come from! Where, Tau, where! No, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, no one knows that.” He lapsed into silence for a moment and then he came up shouting. “They made you special. They made you different. Tell me how!”