were clipped to the vest pocket of his flared fuzzplastic jacket.
He sported a microphone boutonniere in one creamtone lapel.
"Now your hair," said Greta Beatty. She carried his new zip-up
wardrobe bag. "It's in an awful state."
"It was gray," Lindsay said. "The roots grew in black. So I
shaved it off. Since then it's been on its own." He looked at her
levelly.
"You want to keep the beard?"
"Yes."
"Whatever makes you happy."
After ten minutes under the stylers Lindsay's hair was brushed
back from his forehead and temples in slickly brilliantined
curves. The beard was trimmed.
Lindsay had been watching his companion's kinesics. There
was a calmness, a quietude about her movements that belied her
youth. Lindsay felt strained, hypertensive, but Greta's smooth
cheerfulness was beginning to affect him through kinesic con-
tamination. He found himself smiling involuntarily.
"Hungry yet?"
"Yes."
"We'll go to the Periscope. You look fine, Beta. You'll get the
hang of Dembowska gravity in no time. Stick close by me." She
wrapped her arm around his. "I like your antique arm."
"You're staying with me?"
"As long as you like."
"I see. And if I suggest you leave?"
"Do you really think you'll be better off for that?"
Lindsay considered this. "No. Forgive me, Policewife." He felt
touchy, obscurely annoyed. His new identity bothered him. He
had never had one forced on him before. His old training urged
him to lake on local coloration, but the years had calcified him.
Greta led him down two flights of stirruped escalators, deeper
into the asteroid. The floor and walls were of scuffed and
ancient metal, lined with new velcro. The crowd moved in
stately, shredding leaps. Overhead, citizens in a hurry flung
themselves along with ceiling loops. They followed a very old
Dembowskan who was making good time along the wall in a
velcro-wheeled prosthetic chair. "We'll have a little something
to eat," Greta Beatty said. "You'll feel better."
He considered mimicking her kinesics. He was a little rusty but
he thought he could manage it. It might be the smartest thing: to
match her easy affability with his own. He didn't want to. He hurt too much.
"Greta, this easy generosity surprises me. Why are you this
way?"
"A policewife? Oh, I wasn't involved in security at first. I was a
Carnassus wife, a strictly erotic relationship. Promotion came
later. I'm not in espionage. I just do liaison work."
"Many others before me?"
"A few. Sundogs mostly. Not ranking Shaper academics."
"You've seen Michael Carnassus?"
She smiled distantly. "Only in the flesh. We're almost there.
Harem Police have reserved tables. You'll want one of the
windows, I'm sure."
The dim intimacy of the Periscope, to Lindsay's light-blasted
eyes, seemed impossibly gloomy. Steam rose off the food on the
tables. He put on his left glove. He had never been anywhere so
cold.
Cool blue light poured through the bulging, concave windows.
Lindsay glanced through the metaglass briefly, saw a rocky cav-
ern half full of water. An observation sphere the size of a house
was anchored to the cavern's ceiling. Beside it was a bank of
blue spotlights, mounted across the ceiling on arching rails.
Lindsay set his boots into the stirrups of a low-grav chair. The
seat warmed beneath him; its padded saddle was wired with
heating elements.
Greta smiled at him across the table, her blue eyes huge in the dimness. It was a friendly smile without flirtation in it; without,
in fact, any subterranean elements at all. No fear, no shyness;
nothing but a well-balanced hint of mild benevolence. Her
blonde hair was parted in the middle and fell in modish
Dembowska fashion to smooth, blunt-cut edges along her ears
and cheekbones. The hair looked very clean. He had an abstract
urge to run his hand across it, the way he might run his fingers
over the spine of a book.
The fiery letters of the menu appeared in the table's dark
surface. Lindsay put his gloved hand on the tabletop. Its surface
was sticky with adhesive polymers. He pulled his fingers back;
the glue held him at first, then released its grip sharply, leaving
no trace. He looked at the menu. "No prices."
"The Harem Police will pick it up. We wouldn't want you
getting a bad opinion of our cuisine." She nodded across the
restaurant. 'That gentleman in the biocuirass, at the table to
your right -that's Lewis Martinez, with his wife, Lydia. He
heads Martinez Corp, his rank is Comptroller. They say she was
born on Earth."
"She looks well-preserved." Lindsay stared with frank curiosity
at the sinister pair, whose skill as industrial spies was a byword
in Shaper Security circles. They were speaking quietly between
courses, smiling at one another with unfeigned affection. Lind-
say felt a stab of pain.
Greta was still talking. "The man with the tabletop servo is
Coordinator Brandt. . . . The group by the next window are
Kabuki Intrasolar types. The one in the silly jacket is
Wells. . . ."
"Does Ryumin ever dine here?"
"Oh . . . no." She smiled briefly. "He transmits in different
circles."
Lindsay rubbed his bearded chin. "He's well, I hope."
She was polite. "I'm not the one to judge. He seems happy. Let
me order for you." She punched in orders on the table's key-
board wing.
"Why is it so cold?"
"History. Fashion. Dembowska's an old colony; it suffered an
ecobreakdown. There are places where I can show you layers of
flashfrozen mold still peeling off the walls. The worst rots have
adjusted to a narrow range in temperature. When it's this cold
they're dormant. That's not the only reason, though." She gestured at the window. "That has its influence." Lindsay looked out. "The swimming pool?" Greta laughed politely. "That's the Extraterrarium, Bela."
"Burn me!" Lindsay stared outward.
The rough-hewn cavity was slopping over with a turgid, rusttinged liquid. He'd thought it was water at first. "That's where
they keep the monsters," he said. "That observation globe-that's the Carnassus Palace, isn't it?"
"Of course."
"It's quite small."
"It's an exact replica of the observatory of the Chaikin Expedition. Of course it's not large. Imagine what the Investors
charged them to ship it to the stars. Carnassus lives very modestly, Bela. It's not like Ring Security told you."
Every diplomatic instinct held Lindsay back. With an effort, he
broke them. "But he has two hundred wives."
"Think of us as a psychiatric staff. Auditor. Marriage to Carnassus is an arrangement of rank. Dembowska depends on
him, and he depends on us." Lindsay said, "Could I meet Carnassus?"
"That would he up to the Chief of Police. But what's the
point? The man can barely speak. It's not like they say in the
Rings. Carnassus is a very dazed, very gentle person, who was
terribly wounded. When his embassy was failing, he took an
experimental drug, PDKL-Ninety-five. It was supposed to help
him grasp alien modes of thought, but it shattered him. He was
a brave man. We feel pity for him. The sexual aspect is a very
minor part of it."
Lindsay considered this. "I see. With two hundred others,
some of them favorites, presumably, it must be a rather rare
role. . . . Once a year, perhaps?"
She was calm. "Not quite that rare, but you've grasped the
basics. I won't disguise the truth, Bela. Carnassus is not our
ruler; he's our resource. The Harem rules Dembowska because