"True," he replied. "And what a treat you’re a full-fledged proctor now… I can reveal juicy tidbits about everyone in the Vigil, and it won’t be telling tales out of school. Do you know how long it’s been since I polished up my stories for somebody new?"

"Just tell me about Tic," I said.

"Well, now… Tic." Jupkur smiled. "Tic’s a master proctor, isn’t he? Which means he’s the cream of the cream, as you humans say. The best. The acme of perfection."

He kept smiling. Or should I say smirking? Seated on the edge of his desk, simpering like a man with a secret. A secret about Tic.

"So what’s wrong with him?" I asked.

"Think about his name, Faye. Tic. Hardly a conventional Oolom name. And not his original one, oh no. He began calling himself Tic a year back. It’s short for tico."

Tico = crazy. Mad. "So he’s saying he’s insane?" I asked.

"A raving screwball. A total loon. A person of addled wits."

"Why would he call himself that?" I said. "Is he nuts?"

"Faye," Jupkur answered, "Master Tic is Zenning out."

"Ahhhhhh."

To Zen out. The human phrase for a condition that sneaked up on some proctors if they lived long enough. A side effect of long-term link-seed use. These people had achieved a state of… well, damned if I know what went on in their heads, but they’d stopped functioning on the same mundane wavelength as the rest of us. If you’re a glass-half-full person, you could claim they’d reached a higher plane of consciousness; if you prefer the-glass-is-half-empty, you’d say they’d gone gibbering round the bend.

Except that they didn’t gibber. Zenned-out proctors acted happy enough. Blissful even. And when they deigned to pay attention to the world, they seemed keen witted and shrewd, full of insight. Brilliant, perceptive, intuitive, wise. Most of the time, though, they were cabbages. Not catatonic or delusional — just shifted to a set of priorities that didn’t mesh with the rest of us. Eating strawberries while being attacked by tigers, that sort of thing.

Or so the stories went. It’d been a long time since we’d actually seen a Zenned-out case on Demoth — the most elderly proctors had all died in the plague, and the survivors weren’t old enough to have their brains go soupy.

Till now.

"So," I said, "does this mean Tic is unstable?"

Jupkur shook his head. "Not the way you’re thinking. He’s just dancing to a different drummer, as you humans say. Not dangerous, but not very useful either." Jupkur hopped off the edge of his desk and shook out his gliders to get them to hang more comfortably. "Have a look at this."

He turned his back to me and spread his gliders wide like a triangular sail, point-down. In a moment, printed words appeared on the surface of the membrane — an effect that freaked merry hell out of me the first time I saw it. As I’ve said, Ooloms don’t have conscious control over their chameleon abilities; but Jupkur (at flamboyant expense) had coated the back of his gliders with pixel-nano under command of his link-seed. At parties, he could give himself moving tattoos… which he did at every opportunity. Flagrantly. And don’t ask me the subject matter.

A right tease, our Jupkur.

I looked at the writing on display, as he used himself for a projection screen. "What is this?" I asked.

"Part of a report," he replied. "From the coordinator of the team who are scrutinizing the trade talks between us and the Freeps. That was Tic’s last assignment."

I skimmed the words. About Tic. The phrase "inattention to duty" stood out… possibly because Jupkur was making it flash bright red.

"Tic never did what he was told," Jupkur said, as if I couldn’t read it for myself. "The coordinator would assign him to review some paragraph overnight, and in the morning, Tic would have looked at a completely different section. Mind you, his insights were often brilliant… but that didn’t make him any friends, considering that someone else was probably reviewing the same text without the same degree of inspiration. If the coordinator asked, ‘What do you want to look at, Tic?,’ he’d answer, ‘I don’t know yet. Whatever feels important.’ Which is not exactly helpful when you’re trying to keep things organized."

I nodded. People sometimes get the notion proctors are rampant individualists, boldly charting our own paths to track down corruption. But mostly, we’re methodical as mustard — you only get to follow your hunches after you’ve done days of preliminary donkeywork.

"So Tic got booted from the trade-treaty team?" I asked.

"Depends who tells the story," Jupkur said, lowering his arms and letting the words on his back fade away. "Most of my sources think that’s what happened — he got the old leave-ho. But one friend at Vigil HQ says this was Tic’s own decision. A day after the killings, Tic suddenly announced he was needed in Bonaventure. And when a master proctor wants a transfer, he gets a transfer… especially when his current team won’t be sorry to see him go."

"You think Tic might be coming here to investigate Chappalar’s death?"

"Heaven forbid!" Jupkur said with mock horror. "That’s police business, isn’t it? The Vigil has no mandate for criminal investigation. But it’s just possible that such a quibble slipped Tic’s mind… whatever shred of mind he has left."

"Lovely," I said. "The man’s senile, and you’ve made him my supervisor."

"He asked to be your supervisor. And how could we say no to a master proctor?" Jupkur grinned. "Besides, what’s he going to do, Faye? How much trouble can you get into in placid little Bonaventure?"

"Chappalar got murdered," I said.

"Point taken," Jupkur admitted. "But Chappalar didn’t actually get himself in trouble. He was a victim of circumstance, nothing more. Someone decided to kill proctors because they were proctors. It’s a global matter, Faye, and whatever Tic does, how can it make you more of a target than you already are?"

"Gee thanks," I muttered.

Jupkur waved his hand airily. "You’re a target, I’m a target, he, she, and it are targets. Surely you don’t think anyone is singling you out, Faye? This is political, not personal. Some weak-minded local has obviously bought into the Freep propaganda that the Vigil is undemocratic… we’re a wicked unelected body of petty dictators, who do nothing but interfere with free representation. Heaven knows, the Freeps have been harping on that theme ever since we started getting under their skin at the trade talks. So some tico crackpot decides, yes proctors are Evil Personified and must be stopped. In time, the police will catch the culprit; I hope before another attack. But in the meantime, I don’t intend to change the way I do my duty. Do you?"

"Of course not," I said. "I’m just worried about Tic."

"Don’t be. At worst, his mind wanders; at best, he’s still a master proctor. Tic could teach you a lot. And I’m sure you can help him too."

Jupkur freighted those last words deep with meaning; and I caught the hint. A senile old fart just got himself posted to Bonaventure, and someone had to baby-sit him. Surprise, surprise, the senior proctors sloughed off the job on junior me. Crap flows downhill.

"All right," I said, trying to keep the grumbles out of my voice. "Tic and I are a team. Anything else you want to tell me?"

"Just one thing." Jupkur — Jupkur of the thousand-and-one smirks — suddenly lowered his gaze to the floor, abashed. "Tic was chief scrutineer over the Global Health Agency. During the plague." Oh. Ouch.

"No one blames him for anything," Jupkur went on hurriedly, "He demanded a review when it was all over, and the tribunal absolved him of all culpability. Actually, they wanted to give Tic a commendation for swift and decisive action. Things would have been even worse if he hadn’t driven the government to move quickly. But Tic didn’t want a gold medal — he wanted to do penance for all the deaths that happened on his watch. People say he hoped the review panel would crucify him: expel him from the Vigil, rip the link-seed out of his head. When they exonerated him instead, it sent him into a screaming fit, swearing he’d kill himself."