“For a while, yes,” said Olivenko. “Long enough to get her to marry me, perhaps, though I’m just as common as you. I do know more about the language and manners of the court, but I would have been a liability to her without any timeshaping talents to make up for it. As soon as she realized that, then she’d either be miserable, living with a bad choice of consort—or I’d be thrown away. Or killed. Not necessarily by her or by her order—there would be plenty of courtiers who would understand how embarrassing and useless I was, and would therefore help their queen by discreetly killing her husband. Or catching him in some act of infidelity.”

“But you would never . . .”

“It wouldn’t matter if I was actually guilty,” said Olivenko. “Lack of truthfulness doesn’t weaken a story if you can get enough people to believe the lie.”

Umbo thought of the comparison between him and Olivenko. “But if they would try to get rid of you, when you know the language and manners of court—”

“You’ll learn them quickly. And even if someone sees you as a problem or an obstacle, you won’t be as easy to get rid of.”

“Because I can go back and warn myself.”

“Or go back and stab the assassin in the back.”

“Ah, but then there’d be two of me,” said Umbo. “Our old system of warning people without actually traveling back in time had the virtue of not creating copies.”

Olivenko nodded. “It would be bad for the kingdom if every time somebody tried to kill you, the number of Umbos doubled.”

“It might get them to stop trying.”

“But what would you do with the copies?” asked Olivenko. “What Ram Odin did, when he found out he had been re-created eighteen times?”

Umbo shuddered at the thought of his own two dead copy-­bodies that Odinex had killed the first time Umbo visited his ­buried starship. “I can see that it makes sense, but I don’t know if . . .”

“All it takes is one of your copies to decide that he’s the original and the others aren’t necessary. But you see my point. Married to you, Param has you close, where you won’t be starting a rival power center.”

“Instead, my great personal charm will make people want to kill me.”

“You think there won’t be people trying to kill her?” asked Olivenko. “When it’s about power, it’s always a matter of life and death.”

“So another reason for marrying me,” said Umbo, “might be so I’d be close enough to save her from assassins and traitors.”

“Yes,” said Olivenko.

“Also close enough to harm her, if I chose,” said Umbo. “So apparently she trusts me.”