At least the disaster happened behind closed laboratory doors. The reinforced walls contained the explosion, and no one was hurt, except for a few inconsequential slaves. Holtzman decided to make careful modifications to his records so that Lord Bludd would never know about it.

Years ago, thanks to Norma Cenva, the Savant had learned to be careful about showing off a new concept before it had been thoroughly proven. He wanted no further blots of embarrassment on his record.

Anxious to quell muttered jokes among the Poritrin nobles that the great inventor had run out of ideas, Holtzman had revamped old plans for his alloy-resonance generator— a device that had blown up an entire laboratory twenty-eight years ago, destroying a bridge and killing many slaves. It should have worked, should have been a powerful new weapon that acted directly on the metal bodies of the thinking machines. He’d been eager to show off the device to Lord Bludd without testing it first.

The ensuing catastrophic failure had been an embarrassment that took him years to get over.

Regardless of this, the Savant had always believed the concept had some merit. Recently he had given the old plans to his team of ambitious young assistants, and instructed them to make it work.

With bloodshot eyes, mussed hair, and a pervasive smell of sour perspiration, the assistants had recalculated, redesigned, and rebuilt the demonstration assembly. He had pretended to go over their plans in great detail, but he took the apprentices at their word. Now, when the “improved” device failed just as explosively, he was despondent. Fortunately this time the Savant could keep it a secret, but that was only a small consolation.

All those years ago, Norma Cenva had warned him that the concept was hopelessly flawed, that it could never possibly work. She had always been so smug about such admonitions, but maybe she was right after all. What is she doing now, anyway? He had not seen her in a while.

Naturally, he assumed she had wasted more time and accomplished little. If she had made a great discovery, he would certainly have heard about it. Unless she was keeping a secret… as she had when handing over the glowglobe technology to VenKee Enterprises.

Leaving the assistants to clean up and hide the wreckage of the alloy-resonance generator, he gathered all their lab notebooks “for security reasons,” and later destroyed them. The famed inventor liked to think he was in control of his life.

That evening, before he had finished his first glass of tartly spiced Poritrin rum, Holtzman had decided to pay Norma a visit.

THOUGH SHE TRIED to keep a low profile, Norma could not really hide the existence of such a large operation. Tuk Keedair initiated tight security measures, but Lord Bludd still knew where the facility was, based upon the fact that VenKee Enterprises had purchased an old mining operation in a tributary river canyon.

Now Holtzman decided he would go there to see what she was doing, bringing with him only two assistants and a pair of Dragoon guards. If Norma caused trouble, he could always come back later— with force.

The white-robed inventor rode a powered shuttleboat upriver to the dry side canyon where he knew she was conducting mysterious experiments. He saw empty docks and cargo lifts running up the cliffside to the buildings and caves that formed her research facility.

“With such an ugly complex, it’s a good thing she’s hidden it so far out here,” his apprentice said.

Holtzman nodded. “Norma has no aesthetic sense whatsoever. But that doesn’t stop her brain from working.”

Which worries me.

The Dragoon guards and assistants climbed out of the shuttleboat and made their way to the lifts. Holtzman looked around, listening to distant industrial sounds. It reminded him of the clamor in the shipyards he had established on the river delta. His brow furrowed.

When the lift clattered its way to the top of the cliff, Holtzman’s party encountered a dozen well-armed, surly-looking guards who blocked their entry into the fenced compound. “This is a secure area and private property.” All the guards stared at the Dragoons in their gold-scale armor.

“Don’t you realize who this is?” one of his apprentices said boldly. “Make way for Savant Tio Holtzman!”

The Dragoons pushed their way forward, though the mercenary guards made no move to permit their passage. Instead, they leveled their weapons. “Looks to me like you’ve spent hours polishing that gold armor to a high gloss,” the lead guard said. “Wouldn’t want us to scorch it with a weapons blast, would you?”

The Dragoons recoiled in disbelief. “We come on the express authority of Lord Niko Bludd himself!”

“Doesn’t give him the right to ignore private property. He doesn’t own the whole planet.”

“Go call Keedair,” another guard said. “Let him deal with this.”

One of the mercenaries trotted back toward the buildings. Holtzman peered through the fence, saw a large hangar and outbuildings, along with a flow of slaves busily carrying components into a construction area inside a warehouse.

She’s fabricating something in there… something large.

Just then he noticed a child-sized woman approaching him, riding on a personal suspensor platform. She puttered away from the hangar toward the fence, where the Dragoons still faced off with the stony mercenary guards. “Why, Savant Holtzman! What are you doing here?”

“That is not the most interesting question, is it?” He rubbed the gray beard on his chin. “Rather, what are you doing here, Norma? What, precisely, is your work? I have come as your colleague to see if we can help each other against the thinking machines. Yet you act as if you’re engaged in illegal activities.”

In her youth, she had spent years working obsessively on modifications to his original equations. The concept of “folding space” sounded like one of Norma’s typically absurd ideas. Still, this odd, unassuming woman had proven her genius time and again….

“With all due respect, Savant Holtzman, my sponsor has made me promise not to reveal any details of my work.” The diminutive woman looked away.

“Have you forgotten who I am, Norma? I have the highest security clearance in the League of Nobles! How can you refuse to reveal details to me?” He looked at the Dragoon guards, as if he would instruct them to arrest her. “Now, tell me about… folding space.”

Startled, she hesitated, but her eyes glimmered with excitement. “Savant, it is merely an offshoot of your original field equations, a unique extension that allows the folding of spacetime to manipulate the variable of distance. Thus it will enable our Army of the Jihad to attack the thinking machines anyplace instantaneously, without the lengthy travel times we presently require.”

The inventor’s nostrils flared, and he fixed on only one part of her explanation. “It derives from my equations, and you did not think to tell me about it?”

Just then the Tlulaxa merchant bustled toward them, a small man not much taller than Norma Cenva. His narrow face wore a look of alarm; his thick braid seemed a bit frayed. “Norma, please let me handle this. You need to get back to your work.” He shot her a quick, sharp glare.”Now.” Cowed, Norma spun the suspensor car around and flitted back to the enclosed work area.

Holtzman put his hands on his hips and faced Tuk Keedair imperiously. “There’s no need for this to become a complicated issue. Your guards don’t seem to understand that we have a right to inspect and share any new developments that might benefit the Army of the Jihad—”

Not easily intimidated, Keedair responded, “This is a high-security facility, and the proprietary research here is funded solely by VenKee Enterprises. You have no more ‘right’ to be here than the thinking machines do.”

Holtzman’s apprentices gasped. The Tlulaxa nodded to his guards. “Do your jobs and see that they leave promptly.” He looked up at the Savant. “Whenever we have an announcement to make or a demonstration to hold, we will be sure to invite you and Lord Bludd… out of courtesy.”

The Dragoon guards did not know what to do, and looked over at the fuming Holtzman, as if he could concoct an instantaneous solution to the problem. But he saw that they had no choice but to retreat. For now.

“SHE IS HIDING something, just as I suspected all along,” Holtzman said, trying to make Lord Bludd see that he should be deeply concerned. “Why would VenKee insist upon such security, if she is as much a failure now as when she worked for me?”

The nobleman chuckled as he sipped from his bubbling fruit drink. Bludd leaned back in his chair on the balcony and gazed unconcerned from the bluffs to the river, where barges hauled cargo to the delta and the spaceport. “Isn’t it interesting that she suddenly makes a wealth of progress within two years of being freed from her servitude? Perhaps that smart little woman has played you for a fool, Tio! Hiding her discoveries all along so that she didn’t have to share credit with you.”

“Norma Cenva has never cared about fame or credit.” Holtzman declined the nobleman’s offer of refreshment and paced the floor of the balcony, not interested in the expansive view below. “And now that her ‘friend’ Venport got us to release her, we don’t have any claim on her new discoveries.”

Then a cold knife sliced into his chest. “That must be why VenKee was so willing to surrender a portion of glowglobe profits! Whatever Norma has concocted must be orders of magnitude more significant than that.” He clenched his fist. “And we’re cut out of it all.”

Bludd heaved himself to his feet, brushing his plush robes and arranging them neatly. “No, no, Tio. We relinquished only those concepts that were completely new. If she has developed them so quickly since the date of our signed agreement, any decent attorney— or even a brilliant scientist such as yourself— shouldn’t find it difficult to draw a direct correlation with Norma’s original work.”

Holtzman stopped as the idea sank in. “If her work involves what I think it does, then you are correct, Lord Bludd.”

The nobleman took a long draught from his goblet and nudged a second one closer to Holtzman. “Drink up, Tio. You need to relax.”

“But how are we going to get inside her complex? I need to see what Norma is doing. That facility is surrounded by dozens of mercenary guards, and that Tlulaxa foreigner watches over it like a hawk.”

“The visa of a Tlulaxa can easily be revoked,” Bludd pointed out, “and I shall do so immediately. In point of fact, even though Norma Cenva has lived here on Poritrin for much of her life, she is still a guest on our planet, not a citizen. We can put out the word, planting subtle doubts, cutting off supplies and access privileges.”

“Will that be enough?”

Bludd cracked his ring-studded knuckles, then called for his Dragoon captain. “Put together an overwhelming force and go upriver to Norma Cenva’s facility. Three hundred well-armed Dragoons should be sufficient. I suspect the mercenary guards will surrender as soon as they see you coming. Serve the Tlulaxa man with his revocation papers, and then you can investigate and learn what Norma’s been up to. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

Holtzman swallowed and looked away, suddenly finding the view of the river much more fascinating. “No, my Lord. But Norma will resist. She’ll send an urgent communiqué to Aurelius Venport. Tuk Keedair will file a brief in the League court. I’m sure of it.”

“Yes, Tio, but you will have months to investigate her labs and construction bays before anything can be resolved. If you find nothing worthwhile, then we can apologize and admit our mistake. But if you do learn of a scientific breakthrough, we will go into production with it ourselves before VenKee Enterprises can even file an appeal.”

Holtzman was already smiling. “You are quite the visionary, Lord Bludd.”

“Just as you are quite the scientist, Tio. Our adversaries are completely out of their depth.”