Korda figured he understood Gregorian well.

He was wrong. Gregorian had found work in the Outer Circle. There he stayed, until the jubilee tides were imminent, and there was no way for Korda to effectively use him. Korda wrote him off.

Then Gregorian disappeared. He fled suddenly, without warning or notice, in a deliberately suspicious manner. Investigation revealed that shortly before his departure he had interviewed Earth’s agent and been given something. Whatever it was, nobody believed any longer that it was harmless. Alarms were rung. It all ended up in Korda’s lap.

He had handed the investigation to the bureaucrat.

“Why me?”

“I had to send someone. You were simply on deck.”

“Okay. Now, shortly after that, you contacted me at the carnival in Rose Hall. You were costumed as Death, and you were anxious to know if I’d found Gregorian. Why did you do that?”

Korda raised a line-fed glass to his lips. He was drinking steadily, drinking and unable to get drunk. “Gregorian had just sent me a package. A handful of teeth, that was all. I didn’t dare send them to a lab to be analyzed, but it seemed certain to me that they were haunts’ teeth. I’d seen hundreds in museums. Only these had bloodied roots. They’d been yanked recently.”

“That sounds like his style,” the bureaucrat said dryly. “What then?”

“Nothing. Until the other day when I heard from his half-sister that he would meet me here, and give me the proof I wanted. That’s all there is. Will you open the package now?”

“Not just yet,” the bureaucrat said. “Let’s go back a bit. Why did you create Gregorian in the first place? Something to do with regulatory votes, was it?”

“No! It’s not like that at all. I — I was going to have him raised on the Tidewater, you see. I was taking the long view by then. I realized that the reason the haunts were so elusive was that they didn’t want to be found. They were passing themselves as human, living in the social interstices, in migrant labor camps and over top of rundown feed stores. They are intelligent, after all, cunning, and few in number.

“To find them I needed someone who knew the Tidewater well, who moved among its people without attracting attention, who could distinguish between a joke and an offhand revelation. Someone culturally at home there.”

“That still doesn’t explain why that someone also had to be you.”

“But who else could I trust?” Korda said helplessly. “Who else could I trust?”

The bureaucrat stared at him for a long time. Then he nudged the package forward.

Korda ripped open the lid. When he saw what lay within, he went horribly still. “Go on,” the bureaucrat said, and suddenly he was angry. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Final, irrefutable proof.”

He reached into the box and pulled the severed head out by the hair. Two surrogates nearby put down their imaginary drinks and stared. Others further down noticed and swiveled to look. Silence spread like ripples through the room.

The bureaucrat slammed the head down on the bar.

It was inhumanly pale, the nose longer than any human’s ever was, the mouth lipless, the eyes too green. He slid a hand over the cheek, and the muscles there jumped reflexively, reshaping that part of the head. Korda stared at it, his mouth on the screen opening and closing without saying a word.

The bureaucrat left him there.

A smear of sunset was visible through the open door, and behind him the surrogates were singing, These are the last days, the final days, the days that cannot last, when a bellhop materialized at his elbow. “Excuse me, sir,” it murmured, “but there is a lady who wishes to speak with you. She is here in person, and she emphasizes that it is most important.”

Esme, he thought sadly, when will you put an end to this? Almost he was tempted just to walk out on her. “All right,” he said. “Show me the way.”

The device escorted him up a hidden lift to a suite just below the bulbous dome, and left at the open door. The walls were gently luminous, and in their graceful light the sheer extravagant waste of the room, with its hand-carved furniture, its enormous silk-covered bed, was appalling. He stepped within. “Hello?”

A door opened, and the last woman in the universe he expected entered.

He could say nothing.

“Have you been practicing?” Undine asked.

The bureaucrat blushed. He tried to speak, but was so full of emotion he could not. He reached across an immense distance and took her hand. He clutched it, not like a lover but like a drowning man. Were he to let her go, he knew, she would dissolve from his touch. Her face filled his vision. It was a proud face, beautiful, mischievous; and staring at it, he realized that he did not know her at all, and never had. “Come to me,” he managed at last.

She came to him.

“Don’t come yet. I have something I want to teach you.”

Not exactly groggy, the bureaucrat was in a far, wordless state, clear-headed but uneager to speak. He drew himself away from her and nodded.

Undine held her two hands cupped together, fingertips down, like a leaf, a slender, natural opening where the edges of her hands touched. “This is the mudra for the vagina. And this,” one hand flat, the other slammed atop it in a fist, the thumb thrust upward, “is the mudra for the penis. Now” — Still holding the thumb erect, she extended the little finger. She lowered her hand between her legs and hooked the finger into her vagina — “I have made myself into Hermaphrodite. Do you accept me as your goddess?”

“If the alternative is your going away again, then I suppose—”

“All these qualifications — you were born to quibble! Say yes.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now the purpose of this lesson is for you to learn what it is like for me when you make love. That is not much. You wish to understand me, yes? Then you must put yourself in my place. I will do nothing to you that you might not do to me. That is fair, eh?” She reached out to caress his hair, the side of his face. “Ah, sweetness,” she said, “how my cock yearns for your mouth.”

Unsurely, awkwardly, he bent down and closed his mouth about her thumb.

“Not so abruptly. Do I descend upon you as if I wanted a bite of sausage? Approach it slowly. Seduce it. Begin by licking the insides of my thighs. Ah. Now kiss my balls — that’s right, the curled fingers. Gently! Run your tongue over the surface, then suck on them ever so lightly. That’s nice.” She arched her back, breasts rising, eyelids closing. Her other hand clenched and unclenched in his hair. “Yes.

“Now let your tongue travel up the shaft. Yes. You might want to hold me steady with your hand. That’s right, slowly. Oh, and up the sides too! That feels so good. Now ease down the hood to expose the tip. Lick it now, ever so lightly. Tease me, yes. Oh, my! You were born to make my cock happy, darling, don’t let anyone ever tell you different.

“Now deeper. Take more of me into your mouth, up and down, long, regular strokes. Let your tongue play around the shaft. Mmm.” She was moving under him now. She licked her lips. “Grab the shaft in both hands. Yes. Faster.”

Suddenly she yanked him up by the hair. Their mouths met, and they kissed passionately, wetly. “Ah God, I can’t stand it,” she said. “I’ve got to have you.” She drew back, turned him around. “Sit down slowly on my lap, and I’ll guide myself in.”

“What?”

“Trust me.” She kissed his back, his sides. Hot, furtive kisses, there and gone, like blows. She put an arm around him, running her hand up his stomach, playing with his nipples. “Oh my beautiful, beautiful little girl. I want to have my cock deep inside you.”

Slowly she eased him down onto her thumb. It touched his anus, slid within. He was sitting in her lap now, her breasts pressed tight against his back. “There, is that so bad?”