* * * * *
“It is a tribute to your loyalty and keenness and acute, um, acuity, that you recognized your Inspector General’s party when first we met,” I began, addressing the one wearing the diagonal sash, the Mayor as it turned out, a short, stocky fellow named Erah Rekaburb.
“But, please tell me, what made you certain?”
“Your Excellency, we had long heard from the P. U. that when the Emperor’s envoy came he would have to have balls the size of a smeerp’s.” I figured that, whatever a smeerp was, it must be big – glad we hadn’t met one on the trail. “Combine your obvious qualifications with the fact that only a few thousand from outside have arrived on Caliuga in generations, and it was so obvious even a fool would have recognized you.”
“And you are not a fool,” I reassured Erah with authority. “But tell me about this P. U.” I urged.
“Your Excellency, it is the Planetary Union. They have been forming up, consolidating the colonies, all the while maintaining that they were only governing in the absence of the Emperor’s legitimate envoy, but now with your arrival and imminent reinstatement of legitimate authority I’m sure they will yield to you, sir.” I think His Honor the mayor looked forward to the P. U.’s comeuppance.
So it looked like we were pieces in somebody else’s game. It would be critical to make Wanliet the chessboard king, and I? I could be the rook, the sturdy-looking little castle fellow. But, alas, the plot was thickening, dammit!
They always do!