The Gathering Flame Read Online Free PDF

advantage.”
    “Right. How do you feel about getting out of here, now that you’ve learned it?”
    “Highly positive,” Aringher said. “I believe I’ve exhausted all the possibilities of the current situation.”
    The two walked together into the outer room. Vasari pursed her lips thoughtfully. “What are the odds that the first person out in the hall gets picked up by Security?”
    “About fifty-fifty,” Aringher said. “Did you bring a blaster?”
    “Better yet. I brought two.”
    “You know me too well, I’m afraid. Well, nothing for it.”
    He took the weapon from her outstretched hand, and pressed the lockplate enough to disengage the bolt. Then he kicked the door, making it fly open, and in the same movement threw himself out into the hall in a low, flat dive. The action brought him up against the far wall, lying prone with his blaster leveled toward the farther reaches of the Double Moon.
    Nothing else happened. The hall was deserted.
    “Do you know how silly I feel lying here?” he asked, after a little while.
    “I have my suspicions,” she said. “Shall we away?”
    Aringher pushed himself back up onto his feet. “Your place or mine?”
    “Yours is closer.”
    “Then let’s go.”
    A short walk later, the two of them were safely ensconced in Festen Aringher’s apartment overlooking the Strip. Monitors and projectors flashed against three of the four walls in the main room, filling the place with a babble of images and sounds. Aringher had stripped off his jacket and shirt and was busy applying antiseptic to his cuts. Mistress Vasari sat curled up on the divan watching him.
    “Time for a talk,” she said. “What brought you to the Double Moon, and how did you end up in such an undignified position?”
    “You see before you,” Aringher said, “a martyr to the cause of a more equitable galactic polity. I came to the Double Moon because I had heard that Captain Metadi made Waycross his usual port of call, and the Double Moon his usual site of recreation, after a successful voyage. As it happens, I desired speech with the good captain on a certain subject.”
    “Dare I ask?”
    “My unending search for truth, beauty, peace, wisdom—”
    “Money.”
    “There is that,” he admitted. “But we never spoke, Captain Metadi and I, except informally in passing. Before I could arrange a meeting, I heard that someone of considerable importance was already in the building in search of the good captain, and an interview between them was to commence in mere minutes. As I soon discovered, that someone was the Domina of Entibor herself.”
    “Veratina?” Vasari looked surprised. “I know the old lady has an eye for well-set-up young men, but—”
    “Your gossip is sadly out of date, my dear. Veratina’s dead, and the new Dómina is a schoolgirl fresh out of the Delaven Academy on Galcen.”
    “She’s not wasting any time, then, is she?”
    “Indeed not,” said Aringher. “Which stirred my curiosity a great deal, let me tell you. ‘Why,’ I asked myself, ‘should this person be seeking that person?’ Motives interest me, so I decided to find out—and what I learned is that an innocent, beautiful …”
    “Rich.”
    “ … rich young woman desired to contract an alliance with an old, deceitful—”
    “Spare me. Jos Metadi is younger than you are.”
    “Details, details. What counts is that the new Domina appeared to have reached the same conclusion I had, of the need for this particular man in that particular job at this very time. Not only that, she had learned, as had I, the best place to find him—and while I had determined to wait until he was finished with other business before pressing my case, she was bolder. In short, the sly minx outmaneuvered me.”
    Vasari smothered a laugh. “That has to be a first.”
    “Regrettably, it isn’t.” Aringher sighed theatrically. “Yet while I couldn’t be the earliest person to open negotiations with Captain Metadi, I was admirably