a_ter
on the special talents, you know. Dovari was still running waking nightmares when I left—and those are pretty badly singed pyrotics!”“Hatzel and the other teleport should have got only a touch,” Telzey said.
Sams nodded. “And that’s what shook them up so completely. Only a touch—and Hatzel found he’d flipped himself halfway around Askanam! The other one didn’t go quite that far, of course; but neither had done that kind of thing before, and neither wants to do it again. They can’t remember how they did it. And they keep thinking of the various gruesome things that can happen to a teleport at the end of a blind flip—those two are very, very scared.”
His second drink came. He took a swallow, set it down, smacked his lips. “Beginning to feel more like myself!” He gave them a brief grin.
Trigger said, “Are you going to try any more operations on Askanam?”
Sams shook his head.
“Too much bother. I’d have to build up a new gang. Besides, I decided Telzey was right—I’d get bored to death in a year playing games like that. Who’s Askab in Tamandun now, by the way?”
“Vallain,” Telzey said. “Casmard abdicated publicly in his favor at the end of Glory Day. A popular decision, apparently. Casmard doesn’t intend to go back to Askanam again either.”
“He’s on board?”
“Uh-huh.”
Trigger said, “He was telling us in confidence a short while ago that he and Vallain had personal proof there’d been a mysterious but well-intentioned psi involved in the downfall of Toru and Ormota and the various other strange Glory Day events. He said it was something that shouldn’t be discussed, at the psi’s special request.”
“Well, there’s been no significant breach of secrecy then,” Sams said. “The Service might have got stuffy on that point.” He reflected, grinned. “I was sure Toru and Ormota would be taken out one way or another after you two ambushed Hatzel in the gardens.”
“You knew about that, eh?” Telzey said.
“Knowing you,” said Sams, “I didn’t expect you to pass up any opportunities. It wasn’t a surprise.”
“Why didn’t you try to do something about it?”
He shrugged. “Oh, I figured I could spot you Hatzel and still win the game. And if you hadn’t come up with the howler, I’d have done it.”
Telzey smiled. “Perhaps you would, Sams—perhaps you would!”
Child of the Gods
1
The ivory gleam of the Jadel Tower, one of the great inner city hotels, appeared ahead and to the left beneath the flow of the traffic lanes.