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open doorway, then wedged the door half-shut against it. Sarnax came over,
bringing rifles, hunting pistols, and ammunition.
"What's the situation, up there?" Verkan Vall asked him. "What force have
they, and why did they turn against us?"
"Lord Virzal!" Dirzed objected, scandalized. "You have no right to ask Sarnax
to betray confidences!"
Sarnax spat against the door. "In the face of Jirzyn of Starpha!" he said.
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"And in the face of his zortan mother, and of his father, whoever he was!
Dirzed, do not talk foolishly; one does not speak of betraying betrayers." He
turned to Verkan Vall. "They have three menservants of the family
of Starpha; your
Assassin, Olirzon, discarnated the other three. There is one of Prince
Jirzyn's poor relations, named
Girzad. There are three other men, Volitionalist precinct workers,
who came with Girzad, and four
Assassins, the three who were here, and one who came with Girzad. Eleven,
against the three of us."
"The four of us, Sarnax," Dalla corrected. She had buckled on a hunting
pistol, and had a light deer rifle under her arm.
Something moved at the bottom of the descent tube. Verkan Vall gave it a short
burst, though it was probably only a dummy, dropped to draw fire.
"The four of us, Lady Dallona," Sarnax agreed. "As to your other Assassin, the
one who stayed in the airboat, I don't know how he fared. You see, about
twenty minutes ago, this Girzad arrived in an airboat,
with an Assassin and these three Volitionalist workers. Erarno and I were at
the top of the dome when he came in. He told us that he had orders from Prince
Jirzyn to discarnate the Lady Dallona and Dirzed at once. Tarnod, the
gamekeeper" Sarnax spat ceremoniously against the door again "told him you
were here, and that Marnik was one of your men. He was going to shoot Marnik
at once, but Erarno and I
and his Assassin stopped him. We warned Marnik about the change in the
situation, according to the code, expecting Marnik to go down here and
join you. Instead, he lifted the airboat, zoomed over
Girzad's boat, and let go a rocket blast, setting Girzad's boat on fire. Well,
that was a hostile act, so we all fired after him. We must have hit something,
because the boat went down, trailing smoke, about ten miles away. Girzad got
another airboat out of the hangar and he and his Assassin started after your
man.
About that time, your Assassin, Olirzon happy reincarnation to
him came up, and the Starpha servants fired at him, and he fired back and
discarnated two of them, and then jumped down the descent tube. One of the
servants jumped after him; I found his body at the bottom when I came down to
warn you formally. You know what happened after that."
"But why did Prince Jirzyn order our discarnation?" Dalla wanted to
know. "Was it to blame the
Statisticalists with it?"
Sarnax, about to answer, broke off suddenly and began firing at the opening of
the ascent tube with a hunting pistol.
"I got him," he said, in a pleased tone. "That was Erarno; he was always
playing tricks with the tubes, climbing down against negative gravity and up
against positive gravity. His body will float up to the top Why,
Lady Dallona, that was only part of it. You didn't hear about the
big scandal, on the newscast, then?"
"We didn't have it on. What scandal?"
Sarnax laughed. "Oh, the very father and family-head of all scandals!
You ought to know about it, because you started it; that's why Prince
Jirzyn wants you out of the body You devised a process by which people could
give themselves memory-recalls of previous reincarnations, didn't you?
And distributed apparatus to do it with? And gave one set to young
Tarnov, the son of Lord Tirzov of
Fastor?"
Dalla nodded. Sarnax continued:
"Well, last evening, Tarnox of Fastor used his recall outfit, and what do you
think? It seems that thirty years ago, in his last reincarnation, he was
Jirzid of Starpha, Jirzyn's older brother. Jirzid was betrothed to the Lady
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