"Indeed."

The archbishop pushed open the carriage door and gestured Hart to enter.

"Then I won't feel guilty for taking you from something important," he said. "Come ride with me, Menet Kennerin. There's something I wish to show you."

The carriage started with a jolt.

"Anything Your Eminence wishes to show me is sure to be of interest."

The archbishop smiled. "I should hope so, Menet Kennerin. I'm taking you to meet my nephew."

"Frankly, Your Eminence, I don't think I can do anything for him."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not."

Hart glanced at the archbishop, then looked down the broad slope of the lawn. The Regent sat on the grass in a puddle of shadows, staring with fascination at a small, bright bird which perched on his fingertip. The bird spread its wings and danced along his hand, and the Regent gurgled. Filth streaked his face, black hair matted about his cheeks and nape, and his gaudy robes were spotted with food stains and grease.

"Has he been this way always?"

"Since infancy."

"And, despite that, he's the Regent?"

The archbishop spread his hands. "It's a hereditary post, Menet Kennerin. My nephew was the old Regent's only son."

A hot breeze passed over the garden and tweaked at the Regent's oily beard. The bird fluttered.

"He's been seen by physicians?"

"Only as necessary to preserve his life."

"But something could have been done, surely, during his childhood, or before birth. This was not necessary."

"It's man's place to preserve what God has given, not to change it.

That is God's law, and the law of Gregory."

"Yet God gave us the ability to better ourselves."

"As a test, Menet Kennerin. There are trials of commission and trials of omission, and often our goals are best encompassed through inaction."

The archbishop stood. Hart rose, and together they walked down the slope, keeping to the shade of the ancient trees.

"Therefore," Hart said, "even were there something I could do for your nephew, there is nothing I would be allowed to do."

"True."

The Regent stroked the bird's back. A brawny servant leaned against a tree trunk, thick arms folded over his chest.

"I am told that while on Kroeber you did work on a transfer technique."

The archbishop raised the cowl of his robe against the light, and put his hands in his sleeves. He moved through the sunlight like an oval of darkness, from which glowed the pale oval of his face.

"Your informants are thorough."

"Thank you. Was the technique successful?"

Hart frowned. "Generally."

"Only generally, Menet Kennerin?"

"There were some failures, due to mistyping. The donor body has to match within eight nines, or the transfer is unsuccessful."

"Ah. A clone would then be the preferred donor?"

"Yes." Hart looked at the Regent. "But transfer doesn't improve on the basic material, Your Eminence."

"No? You'll have to forgive my ignorance, Menet." The archbishop smiled. "It is, of course, dangerous to speculate on the mechanics of evil, but a shepherd must have some knowledge of wolves. I would have thought that healthy tissues replacing diseased tissues would have a beneficial effect."

"Only a little. The mind is more than a simple physical accumulation of tissues and blood. A transferred lunatic is a lunatic still, Your Eminence."

The archbishop stopped. The Regent, a few meters away, lost interest in the bird. He shook it away. The bird floundered, its clipped wings flailing at the air, and dug its claws into the Regent's finger. The Regent bellowed and closed his hand around the bird, then opened his fingers. The bird lay crushed in his palm. The Regent prodded it, then began plucking its feathers.

"My nephew is God's innocent," the archbishop murmured. "In twenty-one years he has never sinned."

"Not once, Your Eminence?"

"Animals are amoral creatures, Menet Kennerin. They lack free will, and that which cannot choose to sin cannot sin." The archbishop moved away, and Hart followed. "I should be pleased at my nephew's state of grace. But God's great innocent is not Gregory's great leader."

"Yet it is a hereditary post, Your Eminence."

"It is indeed."

"He has been Regent since -- ?"

"For the past year, since my brother died."

The Regent raised the dead bird to his mouth and nibbled. The servant looked on impassively.

"My nephew, for obvious reasons, is without issue."

Hart remained silent. Stonesh turned down an avenue. Trees hid the sunlit lawn, but the Regent's babbling followed them.

"The succession is cloudy, Menet Kennerin. There have been some unexpected deaths and an inconvenient birth. It would be useful if my nephew had a son."

"A marriage, Your Eminence?"

"The Regent is sterile."

Hart stopped. The archbishop took a few more steps, then turned to face him. Minuscule yellow flowers in the grass hemmed his robe.

"Are you asking me -- ?"

"I am asking you nothing, my friend. We are simply conversing."

Hart gestured. "Our conversation leads to dangerous grounds, Your Eminence."

"Danger is a relative thing."

"Relative to you, perhaps. Quite real to me."

The archbishop took his hands from his sleeves and clasped them before him. "You have been in real danger since you entered Gregory."

"Then perhaps it grows increasingly distinct. Your Eminence doesn't feel it?"

"I am the archbishop of Saltena, Menet Kennerin, and you are an abortionist, an out-worlder, and a dark man. I recommend that you keep this in mind."

"And justice, Your Eminence?"

"Sarcasm is unnecessary. Justice and mercy belong outside these walls.

They have no meaning here. For you, perhaps, they have no meaning anywhere on this planet."

Hart unclenched his fists, staring at the archbishop's placid, friendly expression.

"I could leave."

"You could try."

"I could do as you wish -- "

"As 'I' wish, Menet?"

"Whatever. I then become dispensable, do I not? I then become a liability."

"Perhaps. Yet I am an honorable man, or as honorable as circumstances permit."

"Is that my bond?"

"Yes."

Hart gestured. "Why me? The Regent is twenty-one, why wasn't this arranged earlier? Surely you've had other biophysicians on planet before I arrived."

"Perhaps they were incompetent. They tend to be, Menet. Perhaps I did not trust them."

"And you trust me, Your Eminence?"

"Yes. But come, there is something further of interest here."

Hart followed the archbishop down the avenue, clenching and loosening his hands. It was hot under the trees and heavy with the scent of flowers.

The avenue opened into a formal topiary garden. The archbishop paused beside a dense bush clipped to the shape of a saint; the grafted yellow leaves of the halo glowed in the heat and light. When Hart reached him the old man continued down the path. They walked side by side between rows of vegetable martyrs.

"While on Kroeber, you experimented with sperm-base cloning."

"Is there anything Your Eminence does not know?"

"As you remarked earlier, Menet, my informants are thorough. Were your experiments successful?"

"Surely you know as well as I."

Stonesh pulled his cowl back. "They were conducted privately, Menet Kennerin. You seem to thrive on the clandestine."

"As Your Eminence thrives on the obscure?"

The archbishop nodded, pleased.

"They failed," Hart said. "I was young, I lacked the proper equipment, the proper knowledge. I haven't felt the need to try them again."

They reached a hedge wall, pierced by a single, buffered opening.

Stonesh paused and tucked his hands in his sleeves. He rocked back on his heels and looked up at Hart, squinting against the light.

"You tried twice. Once with the sperm of a failed biologist who was first your mentor, then your follower. The second time you used your own sperm, and an improved exo-uterus. It seemed that you had succeeded. During the eighth month, the uterus aborted of itself. When you returned from classes the old man told you of the abortion and said he had disposed of the fetus.

You beat him, and not for the first time. The next day he was gone."

Hart stared, wordless. The archbishop moved away from the hedge opening and Hart stepped through.

The green walls formed a small antechamber from which the twisted, geometric arms of a maze reached back toward the palace. A serving woman sat in the small enclosure, her traditional blue skirts spread around her on the grass. She looked heavy and almost asleep. A small boy tumbled at her feet, playing with a ragged doll. Golden brown thighs and buttocks flashed in the light, and stocky arms tossed the doll from side to side. Thick black hair shifted as he moved his head.

"How can I be sure?" Hart murmured.

"How can you doubt it?"

The child turned, saw Hart, and gazed at him with eyes of Hart's own blue, set between the epicanthic lids common to all Kennerins. Hart felt cold in the sultry air.

"I could make a child," he murmured. "From any base, to look like this.

From anyone."

"Perhaps," the archbishop said. "The old man's name is Gren. He is smaller than you, although his stoop shrinks him. A scar on the right cheek, like a thick crescent. Scars on his back. He went from Kroeber to Aloquin, and thence to Farseer. He said the child was his nephew. He was easy to trace, Menet Kennerin. An old man, obviously insane. Suspicious of everyone, yet far too confused to assume even the most rudimentary disguise. We bought your son from him, Menet, a standard month ago."

"You bought..."

"For two cases of alcohol, Menet. It was easily done."