o have
turned out, and there were guests from Storisende, and even a few who
had made the trip from Koshchei to be there, Simon Macquarte, the
president of Koshchei Tech; Conn would always remember him in the
screen threatening a whole planet with devastation. Luther Chen-Wong,
the chief executive of Koshchei Colony. Clyde Nichols, the president
of Koshchei Airlines.

He almost bumped into Yves Jacquemont, coming in from the hall.
Jacquemont's beard had been trimmed down to a small imperial, and he
was wearing the uniform of Trisystem & Interstellar Spacelines,
nothing at all like a Federation Space Navy uniform. He was laughing
about something; he threw an arm over Conn's shoulder, and they went
into the front parlor together.

"Oh, Gehenna of a big crop!" he heard Klem Zareff's voice, chuckling
happily, above the babble in the room. "You wouldn't believe it. Why,
we had to build six new vats...."

The thin-faced, white-haired man in the chair beside him said
something. Mike Shanlee and Klem Zareff, old enemies, were now fast
friends. Shanlee had come in from Force Command with Conn that
morning. He had stayed on Poictesme as nominal head of Project Merlin,
and intended to remain there for the rest of his life.

"Oh, there aren't any more farm-tramps," Zareff replied. "Everybody's
getting factory jobs off-planet. I have an awful time getting help,
and what I can get won't work for less than ten sols a day. Why,
they're even organizing a union...."

There were feminine shrieks from across the room, and a stampede. The
housecleaning-robot had come in, running its vacuum-cleaning hose
around and brandishing its mops. He saw his mother break away from a
group of older ladies and shout:

"_Oscar!_"

The robot stopped dead. "Yash'm?" a voice came out of it,
Sheshan-accented.

"Go out!" his mother commanded. "Go to kitchen. Stay there."

"Yash'm." The robot floated out the door to the hall.

His mother rejoined her friends. Probably telling them, for the
thousandth time, that her boy Conn fixed up the sound receptors and
voice for Oscar. Or harping on how Conn had been telling everybody the
truth, all along, and people wouldn't believe him.

Sylvie came up to him and caught his arm. "Come on, Conn; they're
going to start the rehearsal," she said.

"They've been going to start it for an hour," her father told her.

"Well, they're really going to start it now."

"All right. You two run along," Yves Jacquemont