They walked a short distance along the crumbling road, struck off across a sandy waste, and abruptly skidded down the side of a shallow depression. After what seemed an interminable wait a plat form settled beside them with Jorrul himself at the controls. Farrari clambered aboard, whispered his thanks to the apprentice’, and they took off. Jorrul said nothing at all until they reached the underground room at the mill. Coordinator Paul was there, and several of the base specialists, but Jorrul gave Farrari no time for amenities.
“Tell us what happened,” he said. “Everything.”
They listened, they questioned him, they sent off urgent messages to base and to various agents, and through it all Peter Jorrul sat silently, a deepening anger twisting his face.
Finally he thumped the table and said bitterly, “A once-in-a-millennium opportunity. Wasted—like that.” He thumped the table again.
Coordinator Paul remarked mildly, “I’d say, rather, that Farrari came through a sticky situation in very good shape. He was lucky, but he helped himself considerably. Many of our own trainees would have been scared witless. Farrari—do CS trainees by chance study dramatics?”
Farrari grinned. “Not by chance. By deliberate, malicious intent! The only way to understand the art of the drama is by acting, or seeing it acted. I took part in at least one performance a week for four years.”
“That must be the explanation; 178—that’s our krolc who got into the temple for the ceremonies—says your performance was magnificent, and he hadn’t the slightest notion you were IPR until the flap about your disappearance shook the Life Temple to its ample foundations. In retrospect he thinks you were a little too good. A bungling baker’s apprentice should have been nervous.”
“I was nervous!” Farrari protested.
“It didn’t show. No one thought about it at the time, including 178, but every priest in Scory is thinking about it now. That, and the fact that you never spoke to anyone.”
“I didn’t dare try,” Farrari said. “Anyway, I didn’t have to. They repeated everything they said to me, and eventually I could make out a word or two and guess the rest. But I still don’t understand that silly ceremony with the cake and why they suddenly decided to make a priest of me.”
“The kru’s priest,” Jorrul said, his bitterness still intense. “Think of the potentialities! And it had to happen to Farrari. Any other agent—”
“No.” The coordinator shook his head firmly. “It wouldn’t have happened to any other agent, and it shouldn’t have happened to him.” He turned to Farrari. “Even in such a marvelously efficient organization as IPR there are occasional goofs. Or had you noticed?” Farrari thought it best not to answer. “Borgley took you to Scorv,” the coordinator went on, “and about the time you arrived there Borgley was called back. He told his assistant to look after you, but, in his rush to put things in order so he could leave, he neglected to tell him why you needed looking after. All Gayne Prolynn knew about you was that you were some kind of super expert on Scorvif: you knew the kru was dead before anyone else did, you knew the relief had been removed from the Life Temple, and when you asked to speak with the coordinator everyone jumped. He naturally assumed that you could handle a simple role like that of the baker’s apprentice with a little coaching, and by taking you with him he was able to leave an experienced person at the bakery. He hadn’t an inkling that you’d had no IPR training and weren’t even fluent in Rasczian.”
“It was still a wasted opportunity,” Jorrul growled.
“One of the critical things you didn’t know,” the coordinator went on, “is that an IPR agent never allows himself to be trapped in a crowd. That’s why you lost Gayne. As soon as he saw what was happening he worked his way sideways and managed to stay near the entrance to the square—where he could be one of the first to leave. By the time he noticed that you weren’t following him, you’d disappeared.” He turned to Jorrul. “There’s no point in speculating what might have happened with someone else. A trained agent would have been on his way home before the priests moved into the crowd. A trained agent would have quietly removed the gift wrapping when the crowd’s attention was on the priest. No, this opportunity could only come to someone who wasn’t prepared to accept it. I think Farrari did well.”
Farrari said dryly, “I’d still like to know what it was that I did.”
“We had fourteen people in the crowd, not counting you,” the coordinator said. “We had one inside the temple, and we shot long-distance teloids from three different locations. When the teloids are processed and all of the reports coordinated there won’t be much that we won’t know about the succession of a kru, but we already know a lot more than we did this morning. One of the things we know is that as soon as the kru and the nobility enter the temple for the coronation ceremonies, delegations of priests are sent into the streets to do two things: to find a commoner to present a gift to the new kru, a very important ceremony that probably dates from some remote time when the commoners had a role in the selection of the kru and affirmed their choice with a gift; and also to bring loaves of fresh bread from the city’s bakers. The first person to appear with a gift was to be taken directly to the temple, the only time, apparently, when a commoner is admitted there. Others were to be taken to the palace to present their gifts in the usual manner at a special audience. And you, Farrari, you dislocated their program. The delegations went forth to cry, ‘Gifts for the kru,’ through all the streets of Scorv, and one of them found a commoner with a gift waiting almost at the temple door. Since he couldn’t possibly have known about the ceremony in advance, it was considered an extremely auspicious sign.”
“Not by me,” Farrari growled.
“But it was. So they rushed you to the kru, and the gift turned out to be—bread!”
“Cake,” Farrari protested.
“Bread,” the coordinator said firmly. “Not even Borgley knows why that cake is baked the same shape and size as bread, but that’s the tradition. One of the kru’s ancestors was fond of it, the bakery reserved the recipe for him, and it became known as the kru’s cake—but probably no kru since then has ever tasted it. Because of its appearance it would be mistaken for bread, and few food gifts to the kru are actually eaten. The kru couldn’t eat all of them, and it’d be sacrilege if anyone else did. Anyway, the cake looked like bread, the priests and everyone else were thinking of the bread the delegations were to bring, and they immediately concluded that the cake was bread. And because it was an especially fine-grained cake, it virtually fell apart when you hit it with the sword.”
“At which moment they should have known it wasn’t bread,” Farrari observed.
“What does it matter what it was after the ceremony? If the Holy Ancestors by some miracle changed the bread to something else to bring about the prophecy they desired, that was no more than to be expected on a day of miracles. First, a citizen was waiting with a gift. Second, the gift was bread. Listen. A group of carefully selected young priests had been practicing, since the day of the kru’s death, to develop skill at cutting a loaf of bread with a sword. According to tradition, each would have an opportunity, and the one who produced the longest, cleanest cut would be made the kru’s priest—a special position and potentially one with great power and influence.”