It was a beautiful, forbidding landscape of rolling, snow-covered boreal forest, laced by rivers and streams and strewn with icebound lakes. To the south, beyond the arterial Albany River, lay the vastness of Nipigon Wilderness Park, a rugged outdoor playground in summer, nearly uninhabited in winter. Northward and to the east the land flattened into dense boggy thickets of black spruce and tamarack that extended without a single track all the way to Hudson Bay. To the west was the little town of Central Patricia, where only administrative personnel, service and transport people, and traders lived all year round.

We descended to a little over 2000 meters and hovered in preparation for landing. I switched to a close-up view of Kingfisher Lodge itself. The rambling one-story building was constructed of sturdy plascrete with an attractive faux-log veneer. It was situated on the shore of a moderate-sized body of water called Caddisfly Lake, frozen solid now and smoothly covered with snow. Dense stands of balsam fir and white spruce surrounded an open compound about three hundred meters wide. I knew that the defensive perimeter extended another 400 meters into the forest and the lake.

Aircraft casually overflying and scanning Kingfisher Lodge would think it was deserted, buttoned up for the season. The compound had no ground-based dissimulator, external force-field, or any other detectable high-tech defenses. The Kagi emplacements and less lethal intruder deterrents were well-camouflaged among the lake rocks and brush, as were the multiphase alarm sensors. No interior lights were visible from the air.

Two of the fieldstone chimneys gave off narrow plumes of vapor, indicating that the heating system was functioning, although the thermostat was probably set at a temperature level too low for human comfort.

In addition to the main lodge, which had at least ten bedrooms, the establishment included a guard tower disguised as a backwoods food cache, an equipment building, a couple of utility structures, and a boat shed. Between the rear outbuildings and the main house was a snow-covered circular area about ten meters in diameter, a lidded hopper lift that gave access to an underground hangar carved from the solid granite of the Canadian Shield. A tunnel led from the hangar to the house. Not part of the original design, hangar and tunnel had been added during Dan's year-round confinement, for the convenience of the resident staff.

"Now let me show you how we get inside our rustic fortress," I said to Joanna. "Since this is a Macrodur hopper, it doesn't carry any of the lodge's system links, so we'll use your new phone."

She took the instrument out of the inside breast pocket of her suit coat and I showed her how to call up the lodge-exterior command menu, deactivate the antiaircraft sensors and photon weaponry, and roll back the door covering the elevator platform of the underground hangar.

While I guided the hopper's manual descent, she took care of the landing preparations.

Then she accessed the lodge-interior menu and tapped more pads to switch on room lights, crank up the heat, awaken the housebots so they could deal with our baggage, turn on the mattress-warmer in the master suite, and start a couple of hot baths.

"This is absolutely decadent," she said, laughing. "A backwoods technocottage! Look: I can light a fire in something called the master-suite snuggery. Doesn't that sound cozy?

And the phone even wants to program the stereo. Would you prefer classical or jazz?" "Both. How about the Undercurrent and Intermodulation albums with Bill Evans and Jim Hall. Then maybe Eine Kleine Nachtmusik."

"Perfect."

I reengaged the perimeter defenses. We were hovering now at a little over tree height above the underground hangar entry, which was over a hundred meters from the house. I turned on the Mitsubishi's emergency landing spot and saw something dash across the snowy ground and disappear behind one of the outbuildings. Joanna saw it too.

"What was that?" she exclaimed. "It looked like a bear."

"Small one, maybe. Funny. I'd have thought bears would have hibernated by now."

Something else was odd about the presence of the animal, but I was too maxed-out mentally to make sense of it. "Okay, babe, down we go. Hit the pad to roll back the hangar elevator door."

"I thought I already did," she said, frowning.

"The lid's still closed. Give me the phone and I'll recheck the menu."

A blinking red telltale. I queried it and the display read --.

HANGAR DOOR IS LOCKED. PLEASE GIVE PASSWORD.

Well, damn. The thing wasn't supposed to lock until I fed it my own new password. I tried the override and reboot, but the maneuvers didn't succeed. The circular opening remained sealed shut.

"Rats. Could be a computer glitch. Or maybe some jerk forgot to purge the old password when the staff left. Well, we'll do things the old-fashioned way for now, and I'll check the lift machinery tomorrow."

I touched down in an open area less than twenty meters from the back of the house.

The night was windless and pitch-black after I doused the hopper's spotlight, the snow depth modest, and the temperature minus-twenty Celsius.

We spent a few minutes in the cargo bay sorting out clothes and toiletries for our immediate needs and stuffing them into a large duffelbag. I pulled a couple of guns out of the weapons locker-a holstered Ivanov to discourage wandering bears, and a big ugly Talavera-Gerardi 333 actinic blaster with an autotargeting scope, in case the Haluk slammed the perimeter defenses and started besieging the house. The rest of the supplies and weapons could wait until tomorrow.

"Why don't we slip into the envirosuits instead of carrying them," I suggested to her.

"It's pretty cold out there and the snow's deep enough to ruin your nice shoes."

So we did that, hauling the lightweight coveralls over our regular clothes and donning heated overboots and helmets. I strapped on the Ivanov, slung the heavy Tala-G on my back, and carried the duffel and a heavy-duty flashlight. Joanna had her purse and a plastic grocery sack that contained the makings for a late supper of scrambled eggs, Nova Scotia smoked salmon, French bread, fresh Tasmanian strawberries, and Veuve Cliquot champagne.

I used a remote-control gorget hung around my neck to open the hopper's cargo door and deploy the steps. Said, "Mush, you huskies! That means you, Professor DeVet."

She giggled and we disembarked into shin-deep snow. I used the gorget to close up the aircraft and turn on its security system and environmental shield. Then we stood side by side in an immense dark silence roofed with overarching stars. It was every bit as beautiful as Arizona.

I was about to make a romantic remark when Joanna said, "What's that smell? Could it be the bear?"

A very faint disgusting odor hung in the icy air and penetrated our helmets. It wasn't the familiar skunky perfume of bear scats, though; this stench was as offensive as the reek of the Y'tata, although composed of different molecules. And I knew what kind of creature had produced it.

"Not a bear, a wolverine. That's what we must have seen moving below the hopper."

I turned on the flashlight and found a line of prints that made a beeline across the compound. We went to look at them. They were nearly as long as a human hand but much wider. Big guy. The animal had stepped neatly in its own tracks, placing the hind foot where the front foot had pressed down the snow, so that each print seemed to have a double row of five stout claws.

"That's strange," I murmured. "The perimeter defenses let small animals and birds get through without getting zapped. But something as large as a wolverine should have triggered a painful warning shot from one of the Tazegard units, then a lethal Kagi blast if the beast kept on coming. I wonder if part of the perimeter is down?"

We paused while I unzipped my suit and asked my phone to run a system check. All the defensive units were on-line. The obvious explanation eluded my fuddled brain. "I can't figure it. But I hope the critter managed to escape the lodge perimeter while we were landing. We sure as hell don't want a wolverine loose inside the compound."

"Why?"

"They don't hibernate, they're powerful enough to kill a moose, and they like to break into wilderness houses and smash things for the fun of it. Then they spray the bits and pieces like a giant skunk and... sometimes deface the scene of the crime in other unpleasant ways."

"Good grief! I've never seen a wolverine. Are they very large?"

"A big specimen can weigh nearly 30 kilos and be more than a meter long. I've only seen one in the wild. It had reddish-black fur and looked like a small bear. They're notoriously fierce and have the worst temper of any North American wild animal. You don't ever want to meet a wolverine."

"Well, I guess not," said Joanna, looking apprehensively over her shoulder.

Instead, we were about to meet something a whole lot worse.

We had unlocked the lodge's heavily secured back door before leaving the aircraft, so we entered easily into a warm, brightly lit mudroom where we were able to take off our envirosuits. I hung the hopper gorget and the pistol belt with the Ivanov on a handy peg beside my suit.

Joanna was still wearing the handsome camel-colored wool ensemble and blue silk blouse she had chosen for the earlier festivities. With her shining hair pulled back into a braided coil, and a discreet string of pearls at her throat, she looked like every randy student's dream of a female academic.

Mine, too.

I was still clad in Dan's perforated athletic garb, although I had shed the body armor right after the media conference. I looked shabby and ridiculous and felt like a sack of azure ordure. A domestic robot appeared, one of those faceless yard-high jobs with umpteen recessed grab-arms and finicky cleaning accessories. It said, "Good evening! May I carry your baggage?"

Someone had pasted a label on it that read: ROBERTA. Clever. Half the domestic bots in the Commonwealth were named Roberta. The rest were called Robbie.

Nevertheless, I gratefully handed over the duffel and the weighty long gun. Joanna kept the groceries.

"May I know your names, sir and madam?" the machine inquired.

"I hate these things," I muttered. "So pushy. Mom and Pop would never have them in the house."

"Don't hurt its feelings," Joanna admonished me. "It's only trying to do its job." To the machine: "I'm Joanna. He's Helly. Please follow us with the things, Roberta. Don't make any gratuitous remarks or offer helpful comments unless we ask you to do so."

"Yes, Joanna."

The three of us moved into the kitchen, which wouldn't have shamed a small hotel.

Joanna began opening cabinets and inspecting appliances.

I said, "I'd love to cook for us, but I don't think I could boil water tonight. Can you manage?"

"Poor baby. Of course I can. Why don't I get our little supper ready now. The lodge has a servitron robot. It can bring the food and wine to us when we want it. Meanwhile, you go unpack our things and relax. Just tell me how to find our room-"

"Master suite," I corrected her. "Go down the long hallway until you get to a living room the size of the Commonwealth Art Gallery. The suite's on the opposite side of the living room, down another hall that leads into the guest-bedroom wing. Remember that your bath awaits, madame! I'm going to have one that's lavender-flavored."

The bot and I trundled off, while Bill Evans and Jim Hall played "Angel Face" on the global stereo.

When my brother Dan was in residence, he had inhabited the master suite-the family wanting to make him as comfortable as possible. I'd tell Joanna about Dan's incarceration when our stay in the lodge was over. Why infect the ambience for no good reason?

The decor was luxuriously backwoodsy, with floors of heated stone flags relieved by large rag rugs. Walls of dark-glazed pine were decorated with watercolors, limited- edition photoprints of outdoor scenes and animals, and Indian carvings. Not a stuffed critter head in the place. Officially, no one was allowed to hunt out of Kingfisher Lodge.

All the windows were covered by armored shutters disguised as wood. I decided I'd roll up the ones in the bedroom so we could enjoy starlight on snow. If the wolverine came around, we'd show him a thing or two.

With Roberta trailing after, I passed a breakfast room, the main dining room, a game room, a huge library, a room devoted to fly-tying paraphernalia and fishing tackle, and a full bar with a baby grand piano and other musical instruments. Beyond that was the main entry hall, with one set of closed doors opening into the living room and another, heavily secured now, leading to a large sunporch that was used only during warm weather. A third door led to the service wing.

I opened the doors to the living room and said, "Follow me, Roberta."

It kept quiet. No gratuitous conversation.

The chamber was cavernous, with a high beamed ceiling and a hideous chandelier made of discarded caribou antlers that for some reason had not been turned on. Most of the room was deeply shadowed. The bot and I went about halfway across the room, to where half a dozen leather settees were grouped around a huge fireplace fashioned of granite blocks. The only light came from gas flames flickering among faux paper-birch logs, and a Tiffany-style bridge lamp standing near a liquor cart full of decanters and glassware. The stereo speakers in this room were playing some Germanic opera that Joanna certainly had not programmed.

She hadn't ordered the huge living room fireplace turned on, either, or requested the liquor cart.

"Stand perfectly still," he said, from somewhere behind me and to my right. "It would be a great pity if I had to double-dart you before we had an opportunity to talk. We've never really had a decent conversation, you and I. It's an appropriate time, don't you think? On the brink of events that will stagger the galaxy."

It was my voice, but overlaid with an intonation that was British or Scottish. No trace of a cowboy twang. The theatrical diction was way wrong.

He stepped out of the shadows holding an Ivanov MS-120, a model that fired darts with extra sleepy-juice. Two shots would put an adult human out for twelve hours. I saw a tall, husky man with breadcrust-colored hair and a prominent widow's peak. His eyes were mean green and his mouth thin-lipped and wide. He wore knife-creased brown slacks, a tan wool Pendleton shirt, a cream neck scarf, and Gucci loafers. The duds were nice, but hardly my style.

He said, "Are you armed?"

"Only the Tala-'G the bot's carrying. Left an Ivanov in the mudroom."

"Let's make sure. Strip down."

"Aww-"

"Do it!" God, he was an ornery-looking devil. Is that what people had seen when they looked at me! "Don't bore me with false modesty, laddie. I've watched you floating in the tank. And a gratifying sight it was."

He made me give my phone to the bot and tell him where the remote control for the hopper was. As I removed my clothes, shook them out, and then immediately got dressed again, my fatigued mind was putting it all together. Too late.

His own aircraft was inside the locked hangar, secured by his password. Not Makebate, which was much too large to fit, but her orbiter gig, with the starship herself parked in space, concealed by the powerful dissimulator.

The wolverine had snuck into the compound when he lowered the lodge defenses for landing, then found itself trapped.

His own "Asahel Frost" personal phone, programmed with virtually all of the data in my own instrument, would have given him access to the lodge. And of course he'd been here before, during Dan's abduction. He'd know what a superb hideaway it was.

Two great minds with but a single thought...

He told the robot to withdraw to the opposite end of the room, after instructing it to accept commands only from him. "As for you, lad, please be seated. We'll wait for your lovely wife." He indicated a couch opposite the liquor cart. "I was surprised to see her at your side during the media conference. Her loyalty was touching."

"Joanna never had anything to do with you," I said. "Let her go. Do whatever you like with me." He poured amber liquid from one of the decanters into a cut-glass tumbler and sipped it, still standing, without offering me any. The Ivanov was tucked in his belt, its two-shot ready-lights glowing. I didn't have a prayer of rushing him, even if I'd been fit.

"I'll do whatever I like with both of you," he said. "Your wife will be just as valuable a negotiating piece as you. When I came here to the lodge, I could conceive of only one way to save my neck. Now, thanks to you, I have two alternatives-and the second is much more attractive than the first. After tomorrow's Assembly vote-"

Joanna screamed, "Helly! Oh, God, Helly!"

She had entered the darkened room and seen him illuminated by the Tiffany lamp and the flames. The man with my face.

I rose from my seat. "No. It's not me."

She stood transfixed, staring incredulously at the two of us, clutching the strap of her shoulder bag as though it were a lifeline.

"Let me introduce myself, Professor DeVet. My name is Alistair Drummond. I am the former chairman and CEO of Galapharma AC. Please come and be seated beside your former husband."

She obeyed, moving like a sleepwalker, unable to take her eyes off him. He had put down his drink and taken the Ivanov from his belt, holding it negligently, apparently without threat.

"Please empty your purse onto the coffee table," he said. She complied and he stepped closer to inspect the contents-a card wallet, a cosmetics case, a computer notebook, several stylomikes, a flat-key folder, a handkerchief, a tiny tin of peppermint Altoids, and a phone. He scooped up the computer and the phone and tossed them into the darkness.

"Roberta! Pick up the two items I dropped. Take them and the other things you're carrying to the communication room. Leave the things there and secure the door with my password."

"Yes, Citizen Drummond," said the machine. No facile familiarity with los domesticos for our Alistair. "I was instructed by Joanna not to offer helpful comments. Will you rescind that order?"

"Yes," Drummond said. "What d'you have to say?"

"A servitron containing cold champagne and hot food prepared by Joanna is waiting in the kitchen. Shall I summon it?"

A brilliant smile broke over Drummond's face-my face. I heard Joanna gasp. She'd always loved my smile.

"Yes," Drummond said to the robot, "I'm feeling a bit peckish. Good of you to've obliged, Professor."

Joanna glared at him.

"Only two place settings have been included," said the robot. "There are adequate amounts of food and wine for three. Do you wish an extra place setting?"

Drummond laughed. "Yes, by all means, Roberta. And now you are dismissed."