"Glory to Port Kar, and Ar's Station!" said a man.

"Yes!" said another.

"Glory, too, to Ar," I said.

"Yes!" whispered men, looking about themselves. "Glory to Ar!"

I heard the ripping down of a sheet from the public boards and saw a young fellow casting it aside. Then, with a knife, he scratched a delka, deeply, into the wood. He turned to face us and brandished the knife. "Glory to Ar!" he cried.

"Gently, lad," I said.

Who knew who might hear?

Spies could be anywhere.

"I would cry out!" he said.

"The knife is no less a knife," I said, "because it makes no sound."

"Glory to Ar!" grumbled the lad, and sheathed the knife, and stalked away. We regarded the delka.

"Glory to Ar!" whispered men. "Glory to Ar!"

I was pleased to see that not all the youth of Ar were in the keeping of Cos, that in the hearts of some at least there yet burned the fire called patriotism. Too, I recalled some would take the oath of citizenship only facing their Home Stone, now in far-off Cos. Others, in the streets and alleys, I speculated, could teach their elders courage.

"You spoke," I said to a man, "of a veteran who was to have been taken in for questioning, who drew forth a concealed weapon, who slew two Cosians, and disappeared."

"Yes," said a man.

"Know you his name?" I asked.

"Plenius," said a man.

I found that of interest, as I had known a Plenius in the delta. To be sure, there are many fellows with that name.

I looked again to the defiant delka cut into the boards.

"I do not think I would care to be found in the presence of this delka," I said, "so prominent on the public boards, so freshly cut."

"True," said more than one man.

The crowd dissipated.

Marcus regarded the delka.

"I fear reprisals," he said.

"Not yet," I said. "That is contrary to the fundamentals policy of the government. The whole pretense here is that Cos is a friend and ally, that she and Ar, in spite of the earlier errors of Ar's ways, so generously forgiven now, are as sisters. This posture is incompatible with reprisals. It is one thing to tax, expropriate and confiscate in the name of various rights and moral principles, all interestingly tending to the best interests of particular parties, and quite another to enact serious reprisals against a supposedly allied cititzenry."

"But sooner or later, surely, as you put it, Cos must unsheath her claws."

"I fear so," I said. "But by that time hopefully you will be free of the city with the Home Stone of Ar's Station."

"And when will you begin to work on this portion of your plan?" he asked. "We have already been doing so," I said.

"Ho!" I cried out, hailing a squad of Cosian regulars. "Here! Here!"

They hurried across the avenue to the boards.

"Behold!" I said.

"Another cursed delka!" snapped the officer.

"And on the boards," I said.

"Have you been here long?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Did you see who did this?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"The cowards are fled," he said, looking about.

"They are all urts," said the subaltern.

"It is only a delka," I said.

"There are too many about," said the officer.

"It is all they can do," laughed the subaltern.

The officer studied the delka.

"It was cut deeply, swiftly," he said, "with strength, probably in hatred."

"These signs are doubtless the works of only a few," said the subaltern. "But they may be seen by many," said the officer.

"There is nothing to fear," said the subaltern.

"I will have this board replaced," said the officer.

"Shall we continue our rounds?" I asked the officer.

"Yes," said the officer.

Marcus and I turned about then, and continued as we had been originally, south on the Avenue of the Central Cylinder.

"What will be the move of Cos?" asked Marcus.

"The city championships in the palestrae games will take place soon," I said. "So?" asked Marcus.

"That is her overt move, that things should proceed as though nothing had happened, as though nothing were afoot."

"I see," he said.

"And in the meantime, I expect," I said, "she will turn her attentions to matters of internal security."

"The officer was not pleased to see the delka," said Marcus.

"Do you think he was afraid?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I do not think so."

"Perhaps he would have been more afraid if it had been cut with more care, with more methodicality."

"Perhaps," said Marcus.

"It is one thing to deal with sporadic protest," I said. "It is another to deal with a determined, secret, organized enemy."

"Like the Cosian propagandists, infiltrators and spies during the war?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"But there is no such determined, secret, organized enemy to challenge Cos," he said.

"I do not know," I said.

"Certainly we are not such," he said.

"No," I said. "We are not such."

"I do not understand," he said.

"The matter may be no longer in our hands," I said.

"Interesting," he said.

15 Fire

"It will be dangerous," I said to Marcus.

"I am of Ar's Station," said he.

"What we do now will have little effect, I fear," I said, "on the fortunes of Ar's Station."

"Here is the rope," he said.

I took it. It was fastened to a one-pronged grappling iron, no more than a simple hook.

It was about the second Ahn, a dark, cloudy night. We had approached the house of records.

This afternoon, on the Avenue of Turia, a cart, putatively carrying the records of the veterans of the delta, supposedly on its way from the house of records to the war office in the Central Cylinder, had been surrounded by a group of youths, crying out against the veterans of the delta, almost as if it had been months ago, a time in which there had been several abusive demonstrations against the delta veterans, whose crime seemed to be that they had been loyal to the Home Stone and that they had been so foolish as to have served Ar, and suffered for her, in the north. Those demonstrations, of course, had been instigated at the behest of Cos, and carefully planned and organized by Cosian agents. Such demonstrations, in spite of the apparent beliefs of many of their participants, do not somehow materialize by magic, in response to some requirement of appropriateness. They are structured events, serving certain purposes. In brief, however, these lads, some dozens of them, had surrounded the cart and its guards, screaming out reproaches against the delta veterans, spitting on the records, and such. The guards, I think, Cosians, were not certain how to respond to the demonstration. They tried to push back the youths, but their lines were crowded through, while them themselves were being greeted as heroes. Soon one or two youths, seemingly overcome with hatred, had leaped upon the records, and were tearing them apart and hurling them to the gathered crowd. In another moment a torch had been brought. Marcus and I, knowing the movement was to take place, and, indeed, it had been on the public boards, had come to watch. Men drew swords but the officer restrained them. The papers had then been burned and the youths had withdrawn in triumph, singing songs to the glory of Cos. I had recognized the first youth to spring upon the cart. It had been he who, some days before, had cut the defiant delka deeply into one of the public boards on the Avenue of the Central Cylinder.

"Those are brave lads," I had said to Marcus later.

"But surely," he said, "the destroyed papers were not the records of the delta veterans."

"No," I said. "They would have been moved secretly."

"What was the purpose of all this?" asked Marcus.

"Many associate the veterans of the delta with the Delta Brigade," I said. "This was undoubtedly a trap set by Seremides. In pretending to move the records, records from which the identities of the delta veterans might be obtained, to a place of safer keeping, he hoped to lure an attack by the Delta Brigade. Certainly there were many guards, near the cart, far more than one might expect, and there were a great many others, if I am not mistaken, in the crowd, in plain garments, with concealing cloaks. They moved, at any rate, with the cart."