"I want to observe."

"I don't perform before an audience."

"Menet Kennerin..."

"Your Eminence! This is a surgical procedure, not a political one." He stared at the archbishop. "Wait in there."

Stonesh turned and crossed the courtyard. When he was gone, Hart slung the consort over his shoulder and went into the laboratory.

He cleaned her first, sponging the vomit from her body. She looked tiny under the harsh lights, breasts and hips narrowed by shadows. He adjusted the lighting. Fresh scratches lined her thighs and bled as he cleansed them. She was still a virgin.

He administered a sobor and attached the electrodes of the pulser; the rhythm of her breathing changed as the electronic anesthesia slid through her brain. He moved her under the see-through and set to work.

Three hours later, when he was sure the implant had taken, he detached the electrodes and washed the paste from her skull. She turned her head, murmured, helpless in her sleep. He touched her breasts, remembering her screams; she seemed the ultimate victim, sacrificed first to the Regent's clumsy insanities, then to the cold objectivity of Hart's needles and lights.

He rested his right hand on her abdomen, noting that the tiny puncture had disappeared. The laboratory hummed around him.

"You've given me a child," she said.

Hart jerked, and his left hand went to her neck. She grasped his wrist and held him, not fighting. Her eyes were calm and he relaxed his hand, letting it rest on her throat.

"Were you told?" he said.

"No."

"You're dreaming this."

"No." She moved her head to look around the laboratory, and Hart felt the muscles shifting in her neck. "I am to give the Regent a son. I'm not stupid. He cannot give me a child, so you did."

She moved her hips under Hart's hand, and he shook his head.

"You're still a virgin."

She looked at him. "Change that."

Hart stared at her, then shook his head again.

"The Regent cannot break me, so you must. Or none of this will work."

Her body tensed under his hand, as if in anticipation of pain. Victim. Hart struggled to keep his body calm. "Take me," she said.

"You're being used," he said.

"Take me."

"You're condoning it."

"Take me.

He gestured, caught in her mysterious calm, and loosened his clothing.

She stiffened momentarily, moved against him, turned her head away in silence, touched his back. When her body had relaxed around his, he caressed her neck and pressed.

The archbishop was asleep in a chair before the dark fireplace. He woke with a start, rubbed his eyes, and followed Hart to the waiting carriage. Hart held the bundled consort in his arms, and his hand, under the coverlet, caressed her smooth shoulder.

He turned over uneasily, his fingers tangled in the blankets, and his mouth shaped words of negation. He dreamed that he walked through the cemetery on Aerie, near his home, past the frozen, accusing fingers of his family to his father's grave. As he approached, the grave leaped to flames. He ran toward the stream, but dead Laur barred his path. He turned, and his family filed slowly through the fire, untouched, not looking at him. He approached the grave again and the heat drove him back.

He sat crying in the hayloft, small, miserable. His sister held him and whispered comfort, but when he looked at her face she became his mother, became the archbishop, became the Regent. The Regent opened Hart's fist to reveal a dead bird. The bird became a spider. The spider became his son. He took the child's hand and walked along Saltena's waterfront, trying to tell him something so important that it fled both mind and mouth before he could shape it. The child laughed at him. The archbishop, drowning in a cask of Malmsey, spoke of the soul. The consort stood naked, stomach bulging. Her belly moved, and Hart saw the outline of a goat under her taut white skin. She looked at him with calm green eyes, and when he reached for her she dissolved to fog, leaving the goat mewling at his feet. Spider leaped into the cask of Malmsey, hiding in the archbishop's black robes. The Regent bellowed, animal noise, dense with oxen or the fury of the axe. Hart groaned, captured in the manacles of sheets, and no light dawned.

The musicians in the gallery sawed and thumped and blew and pounded, the director waved his arms, the open mouths of the chorus strained toward the vaulted ceiling, but the results of their disparate energies drowned in the noise of the crowded ballroom. Courtiers on the dais hovered about the smaller throne, hiding the rounded figure of the consort. A buffet supper filled long tables; servants wriggled through the multitudes, carrying goblets of bright wine. A scent of flowers blew in the open windows and was lost in a labyrinth of perfumes. Beyond the palace walls, the city glowed with festivities.

Saltena celebrated the consort's pregnancy with exuberance and alcohol, and if any harbored doubts or complaints, they went unvoiced.

Hart lounged near the dais, watching the consort appear and disappear behind the throng of well-wishers and physicians. She laughed and chattered, an eager country child delighted with the attention she received. Hart watched her with cynical curiosity, convinced that under her pleased, pale face lay not bone and muscle, but a labyrinth whose complexity he could not gauge. The consort turned her head, her glance brushed by him but did not stop, and he pressed his shoulder against the wall, uncomfortable.

The archbishop ended a conversation and came down the dais steps. His pale face was almost pink tonight. Hart left his corner and slipped through the crowd, almost losing sight of the small cleric. Stonesh paused to exchange pleasantries with a lord and lady, and Hart waited, impatient, until the couple moved on.

"Your Eminence."

"Menet Kennerin, I trust you are enjoying our celebration as much as we -- ".

"I need to talk with you."

"But this is an occasion for joy, Menet. Not for conversation." The archbishop's voice was pleasant, but his glance chilled.

"We had a bargain."

"Perhaps we can discuss this at a later date." Stonesh smiled and nodded over Hart's shoulder. "Lord Herm, you're looking well. I trust your health has improved."

Hart refused to be dismissed. He stood at the archbishop's side until the rheumatic old lord had moved away, then touched Stonesh's shoulder.

"I've given you your child," Hart whispered, still smiling. "Now give me mine."

Stonesh gestured and led the way from the ballroom into a dark garden.

The air was cool and fresh. Hart thrust his hands under his belt. His fingers felt clammy.

"You make yourself a nuisance. A dangerous nuisance," Stonesh said. All pleasantry had fled his voice.

"I want my son."

"You'll have your son when we have ours, not before. Those were the terms of our agreement."

"But I've not seen him in two months, nor had word of him. Must I wait another seven?"

"Parental distress, Menet Kennerin? Paternal concern? For almost three years you had no son at all, and now you find seven months burdensome."

"Your Eminence. Please. At least let me see him now and then. At least that."

Stonesh tucked his hands in his sleeves and looked at Hart. A smile formed at the corners of his mouth.

"Well and truly hooked, my cynical out-worlder. Gullet and fins, backbone and belly."

"I trust you're pleased."

"I am." The archbishop paused. "You may see your son each Fastday, from sext to vespers. Will that satisfy you?"

"It will have to, won't it?"

"Indeed. And no further public demonstrations, Menet. You endanger all of us. Including your son."

"You would kill a child?"

The archbishop shrugged. "I am a political man." He turned to go.

"Your Eminence. One thing further."

"Yes?"

"The consort. Are her physicians considering the rejection effect?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Rejection effect. It sometimes affects clone-impregnated women when none of the genetic material is theirs. It's rare, but I check my patients for it monthly until birth. It's preventable, if caught in time."

"It affects only clone births?"

"Yes."

"This is fine news." The archbishop frowned. "And how, pray tell, am I to have the physicians check for complications of an illegal procedure?"

"I'm sure Your Eminence will manage," Hart said, bowing. "Your Eminence always does."

Three days later, when Hart appeared to visit his son, Spider held forth a scrap of paper and refused to speak until his father had read the message.

"You have managed to ensure your continued usefulness. Next week bring the necessary." The note was unsigned.

Hart smiled and tucked the paper into his pocket. Within a few minutes he and his son were tumbling down the Regent's lawn, their laughter mingling with the cries of birds.

Summer's heat increased. The wealthy fled the city to country estates or seashore mansions, and the poor crept through deserted alleys, clinging to the scanty shade of trees and walls. This year the archbishop remained in Saltena. Hart, on his way to tend the consort, saw him often; Stonesh, seated in stifling garden, or dim, windowless room, would raise his head from a book and nod , and Hart bowed as he went his way, black case slapping against his thigh. The consort accepted his ministrations and tests in silence, flaccid with heat; Hart began to doubt his own memory, unsure that the consort was not, after all, the bovine baby machine of his first analysis. Occasionally he saw the Regent about the grounds. God's agent moved slowly and with increasing confusion, and once Hart noticed the Regent's face swollen with bruises. He wondered whether the servants beat their master, and whether anyone cared. The Regent bellowed about the stifling rooms, and his wife's belly swelled before her. During her seventh month, she had Hart bolt the doors of her room and commanded that he make love to her. He closed his eyes and imagined her bound, broken, weeping, bathed in the harsh lights of his laboratory, unconscious beneath his hands. She reached orgasm and thrust him from her, turning away in silence. Hart smoothed his clothing and left. Tara, lovely in the robes of a Lady of the Chamber, sat in the anteroom, a piece of needlework on her lap.

She raised her head and smiled as he passed, and his back felt cold. He took anger and his throbbing sex home with him and buggered Melthone until daylight. The stench of the city reached through the flowers of the palace gardens, and it seemed that summer would never end.

Then, with unexpected grace, Saltena moved into autumn. Sea mists dissipated on cool winds into crystalline mornings, translucent afternoons, evenings brilliant with a feast of stars. Late-blooming trees along the avenues opened in clusters of green and magenta flowers, under which the returning citizens strolled in the gentling heat. The urchins selling ices and fruits took on the faces of choirboys, and the bells of the cathedrals floated on the cool air.

On the last Fastday of autumn, Hart arrived at the palace garden to find Spider talking with the consort. Hart paused in the shadow of trees as Spider held out his ragged doll and discoursed, waving the doll to emphasize his words. The consort leaned over the bulk of her middle, staring at Spider's mobile face. Hart clenched his fists and walked to them over the freshly mown grass.

"Menet Kennerin," the consort said.

Spider dropped his doll and leaped into Hart's arms.

Hart kissed his son and bowed. "Your Highness."

"Your son is delightful. Are all children this charming?"

"I've no idea, madam." He turned away.

"Menet! I did not dismiss you!"

He turned back. In her green robes and huge belly, she looked like an outraged frog. Hart grinned.

"Madam, I'm not yours to dismiss. I've come to see my son, not to serve you."

"I am the Regent Consort."

Hart nodded at her middle. "Indeed, you are."

She shifted. Her fingers twisted together on her lap. "You dislike me,"

she said.

Hart was silent.

"You object to my speaking with your son?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I prefer people with only one face, madam."

She laughed and spread her hand over her middle. Her fingers were straight and tense. "I'm doing my best," she said.

Spider reached for his doll. Hart placed the child on the grass.

"I'm afraid," the consort whispered. Hart made an expression of polite inquiry. "I think I'm going to die. My mother did, when my brother was born.

He died too. I don't want ... I'm afraid." She wet her lips and looked at Hart. "On other planets they have ways of making it easier, don't they? They have ways to make sure a woman doesn't die. My friends said so, when we could talk. I know it's illegal, but there are ways, aren't there?"

"I don't believe this face, either," Hart said.

She sat back in her chair and drummed her fingertips on her belly. "I was told you'd be difficult," she said.