He knew his talents. He was a doer and a fixer, and a damned good one. He could think on his feet and
improvise solutions in real-time to tough problems; he was a typical product of his home world, Teufel.
"What sins must a man commit, in how many past lives, to be born on Teufel?" Half the spiral arm knew
that saying. Like all the planets of the Phemus Circle, Teufel was resource-poor and metal-poor. Settled in
despair and dire necessity as the life-support systems of an early colony ship faltered and failed, it was
also an outcast planet, too hot, too small, and with a barely breathable atmosphere. The life expectancy of
a human who grew to maturity on Teufel—most did not—was less than half the average for the Phemus
Circle, and less than a third of that for an inhabitant of any world of the Fourth Alliance. All those born
and raised on Teufel found an instinct for self-preservation before they could talk—or they never lasted
long enough to talk.
Rebka was a slight, large-headed man with hands and feet too big for his body. He had the wan, slightly
deformed look of someone who had suffered persistent childhood malnutrition and trace-element
deficiency. But that early privation had affected his brains not at all. He had learned the odds early, when
at eight years old he had seen a set of images from the wealthy worlds of the Alliance bordering the
Phemus Circle. Strong anger was born within him. He learned to use it, to channel and control it to fuel
his progress, at the same time that he learned to hide his feelings with a smile. By the time he was twelve
years old he had worked his way off Teufel and was in a Phemus Circle government training program.
Rebka was proud of his record. Starting with less than nothing, he had risen steadily for twenty-five years.
He had run massive terraforming projects, taking the harshest and most inhospitable planetary bodies and
converting them to human paradises (someday he would do as much for Teufel); he had led dangerous
expeditions to the heart of the mirror-matter comet region, far from any chance of help if things went
wrong; he had flown so close to stellar surfaces that communications were impossible in the roar of
ambient radiation, and his returning ship was ablated and melted past hope of further use. And he had led
a crew on a near-legendary trip through the Zirkelloch, the toroidal space-time singularity that lay in the
disputed no-man's land between the worlds of the Fourth Alliance and those of the Cecropia Federation.
All that. And suddenly—at the thought, confusion was replaced by anger; anger was still his friend—he
was demoted. Stripped, without a word of explanation, of all real responsibilities and sent to a distant,
unimportant world to act as nursemaid or father-confessor for someone ten years his junior.
"Just who is Max Perry? Why is he important?"
He had asked that question during his first briefing, as soon as the planetary doublet of Dobelle became
more than a name to him. For Dobelle was an insignificant place. Its twin planetary components, Opal
and Quake, orbiting a second-class star far from the main centers of the local spiral arm, were almost as
poor as Teufel.
Scaldworld, Desolation, Teufel, Styx, Cauldron—sometimes it seemed to Rebka that poverty was their
only bond, the single link that held the Phemus Circle worlds together and separated them from their
richer neighbors. And from the records, Dobelle was a worthy member of the club.
The records on Perry were transmitted to him, too, to be scanned at his leisure. Typically, Hans Rebka
reviewed them at once. They made little sense. Max Perry had come from origins as humble as Rebka's
own. He was a refugee from Scaldworld, and like Rebka he had made his way rapidly upward, apparently
bound for a job at the very top of Circle government. As part of the general grooming process for future
leaders, he had been sent for a one-year tour of duty on Dobelle.
Seven years later he had still not returned. When promotions were offered, he refused them. When
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