At the great doors of the Droom, each half a line long, the latest Herald-Honorary gave the nickel floor beneath his feet a ponderous drubbing with his 2-measure mace.  So vast was the chamber. so noisy and crowded, that the sound, along with that of his voice, might have been lost had not an amplifier been built into the head of the mace itself.  A small, neat man---dark, handsome, and well-dressed---the official representative of the principal enemy of the Premier and Cosmopolity of Romanova stepped past the threshold and melted into the glittering throng.

Another crash, another shout:  "Oligarch-Extraordinary Chuzhinov Leontiy Vladislavovich -Antonov and the Lady Vladislavovich-Antonov!" A man in a black mask watched the entrance.  Nearby, a quieter voice arose at his shoulder, its cultured tones rippling with cynical amusement.

"This new Herald of the Premier," Starodubov Lavr Artemovich-Kuzmin, Oligarch-Hereditary of the Romanovan Isle of Rollan, adjusted his glitter-gilded antonchekov, assumed a stance with one hip thrust outward and flopped a perfumed handkerchief at his neighbor of the moment.  "Quite capable of babbling anything, I tell you, in and thousand different languages, yet he understands nothing at all in any of them."

It was an opening gambit, an invitation to partake in the perilous 2-edged game of Droom repartee.  Artemovich-Kuzmin lowered his mask, raised a plucked eyebrow, and awaited a reply.  Behind the mask of black, his temporary companion frowned.  A player of far more dangerous games, he had never cared for repartee, had never liked this Artemovich-Kuzmin, his gaggle of androgynous friends, nor any of their perverted affectations, no matter how popular they happened to be.  According to the tacit rules, measured rudeness was in order.  "Maybe because he was chosen from the hereditary Oligarchy."

Artemovich-Kuzmin dropped his mask to reveal a painted mouth open in mock outrage, covered the orifice with a soft, nail-enameled hand, winked, and turned to pass the remark along.  The man in the black mask turned his back.

"Deculturate."  He uttered the expression of maybe childish derision under his breath, dismissed Artemovich-Kuzmin, and resumed watching the colorful spectacle which a mass audience with Premier Arkvitius X never failed to present.  The space they all occupied, shoulder to shoulder and, as always, raising an unbearable racket, was simple in conception and design, no more than a cube proportioned with an accuracy of one ten-thousandth of a line, and being a full verst upon each side.  this vast space was the "Droom of the Cosmopolity of Romanova, the center from which the Premier's will was imposed upon a million suns. As with all such architecture, it was intended to impress, to belittle, and intimidate at an animal level inaccessible to rational analysis those whose fates were decided within.  At this, it was well suited.

The floor was a single mass of carbon-bearing nickel-iron, the naked heart of a planetoid cut, rough-planed, and delifted from orbit eleven centuries earlier, line by line, over the endless period of an entire year, a titanic feat of courage, planning, expertise, and Deepsmanship which in all probability could not be duplicated today.  In place, it had been laser-polished to half-wavelength mirror smoothness.  Over the centuries, with continued careful attention, under the subtle friction and persistent pressure of a billion locomotory appendages, it had by gradual degrees, acquired the patina it now wore, a flawless blue of infinite depth.  Those standing within the mighty chamber---upon those rare occasions when sufficient room existed to appreciate the phenomenon---appeared to be walking on water.   Knowing more of the history than most visitors to the Premier's Droom the man in the black mask never failed to be amused by this complex optical illusion.

Occupying the center of the Droom, taking up only a tenth of the surface of the meteoric steel floor, a dais lifted a single modest measure.  Rather, the floor had been relieved, representing to those with understanding to appreciate it, the most arrogant feat of machining ever accomplished.  This rectangle, five hundred measures in length, two hundred in width, was the Premier's Table.  Anyone lacking the credentials of an Oligarch or the Premier's permission, who dared step onto its gleaming surface would be chopped down in an instant by hundreds of Cossacks standing at its perimeter or patrolling overhead upon purge-field repulsors---representing in themselves a fabulous expense---possession of which was savagely restricted.

At the Table's end furthest from the great doors at which the black-masked man had earlier been announced by the Herald-Honorary, an elevation of another measure---two hundred meters wide, fifty measures deep, also integral with the floor---was set aside for the Premier and his personal retinue.  At present, save for guards, it was unoccupied.  The vast and noisy gathering in the Droom was in anticipation of the Premier's arrival.

The walls enclosing the Droom were no less impressive than its Deep-spawned floor, composed, as they were, of purest silica a line square and 50 measures thick. Gigantic spreighformers, requiring the combined output of a planetary system's thermonuclear reactors and early purge-field annihilators, had been assembled upon the site and afterward (in some haste) disassembled; the parts destroyed or dispersed out of fear that a fabricator so massive might be employed to create whole warships or other weapons threatening to the interests which had caused it to be constructed.  By daylight, the walls admitted an eerie tinted view of vast gardens about the Droom which somehow rendered those manicured expanses more remote than the stars and made the building's occupants feel they were standing at the bottom of an ocean.  By night, despite their seamless perfection, they seemed to swallow illumination like frozen slices of the infinite Deep.

A verst overhead, the ceiling of this vast monument to power was the latest addition to the structure, one made by comparison to the original effort, in modern times.  Once a unitary span of glass, albeit less massive than the walls supporting it, five hundred years ago, during a period of economic and political "readjustment," it had been demolished by a single little trajectile weapon weighing less than a gramm, traveling at nine versts per second, inserted from orbit, with thousands of identical others, by insurgents never identified or apprehended.  Now the ceiling of the Droom was metalloid mesh, supported by purge-beams and suffused with energies more than capable of withstanding such assault.  Devices installed upon its under-surface controlled "weather"---for the most part indoor rainstorms---which otherwise would have happened spontaneously within the enormous, enclosed volume.  The glow from overhead bathed everything beneath it in a pale blue light, reflected from the mirrorlike floor and absorbed by the surrounding walls.

Additional embellishment, the elaborate ornamentation which otherwise characterized this age, had been avoided so that the architect's assertion of unanswerable power remained unblunted.  To the man in the black mask, it was the most beautiful place in the known universe, and, at the same time, the most horrifying.  And the most astonishing fact about the Droom, at least to him, was that it had never been intended as a seat of government but had been built for private parties for individual mercantile purposes a century before the founding of the Cosmopolitan Imperium-Conglomerate.  He shook his graying head and took a deep breath, never lowering his mask.

The cast of characters strutting this mighty stage was mostly human, although centuries upon hostile, unloving planets or floating in the night-black Deep itself, and consequent genetic drift imposed by the mutation and natural selection, had modified the meaning of the word.  With the conquest of the stars, an enormous physical variation had begun imposing itself upon mankind.  Some present stood no fewer than three measures tall, having arrived from small, lightweight planets with little to no significant gravity.  Many wore metalloid braces to augment their muscles or protect fragile bones, over-shuffled about the mirror floor in walking frames.  A wheeled chair or two one power stretcher indicated those whose missions at the Droom must be urgent to necessitate heroic measures.  Others of the far-flung Cosmopolity, possessed of thick bones and massive limbs, moved with exaggerated circumspection in gravity constituting but a fraction of what they'd been born to, attempting to avoid an accidental head-high leap which might embarrass them or earn them a kinergic reprimand from ever-suspicious Cossacks.

The man in the black mask nodded to a colleague he suspected of trying to have him murdered the previous year but continued concentrating upon his own thoughts.  The rich variety of visible accessories and formal dress served purposes beyond ostentation.  For some visitors, attenuate and emaciate or broader and compact, the ambient temperature (in which he felt quite at home) was one of freezing discomfort.  They were swathed in thick furs, featherpelts, or quilted kevlar, a poignant reminder of someone he loved and had recently condemned to spend the rest of her life in such repellent swathing.  For others, the Droom was intolerably hot or humid.  These unlucky individuals were attired in minimal clothing more suitable for swimming, sunbathing, or erotic play.  Some few unfortunates required bacterial or allergenic filters, canisters of supplementary oxygen, exotic trace gases, or other contrivances from which they breathed, at intervals or upon a continuous basis.

Meanwhile, servants---kankrin in the main, along with a stylish smattering of less-familiar others (some with questionable sapience, no more, he thought, than bright domesticated animals)---bustled about in the cavernous chamber fetching food and drink.  The smells----along with those of bodies, pheromones, and breathing gases---created a sometimes overwhelming olfactory experience even in this well-ventilated space.  Those carrying messages or running other errands for their owners and employers were not the only aliens within viewing range.

Today a delegation of "stickmen" was at the Droom.  Gross and disgusting in appearance, they remained the most humanlike non-humans yet discovered.  In point of fact, they had discovered humanity two generations ago, arriving without prior detection at Romanova itself, not bothering with intermediate stops that any Romanovan starship would have deemed necessary in Cosmopolitan systems closer to their realm.  This was believed to lie beyond the neutral imperium-conglomerate of   Artemovich-Kuzmin, a fact of some significance to the man in the black mask.  Another stab of love and conscience assailed him.  For a moment he regretted the adamancy of his resolve.

Pursuing this morning's event menu, an enfilement for the Premier's Oligarchs hand-delivered before daybreak by liveried couriers, he'd noted the arrival of one of the stickmen's interstellar ships, driven by starsails just like human vessels, yet proportioned strangely and possessing improvements not well understood by the few Romanovans motivated to sufficient curiosity to investigate them.  It was not that the stickmen attempted to keep their technology a secret.  Those beings----3 measures tall, and preferring to go naked, file-thin not just in their extremities (of which they had six, not counting short manipulators growing in hornlike pairs upon their fist-sized heads) but in their torsos as well.---claimed they were no more than simple explorers and traders.  Trade they did, driving hard bargains and yielding interesting and valuable commodities in exchange.  It was clear that they hailed from a vital, expanding civilization, innocently eager to share what it knew for information about how other species did things.

Even after all this time, few within the byzantine environs of the Droom were willing to take the stickmen at their word.  To whatever extent they were thought open and honest in their protestations, for that very honesty they were held to be---by the more twisted Cosmopolitan minds he was compelled to deal with every day---especially enigmatic and inscrutable!  He took a breath.  Twisted Monopolitan minds?  Who was he to criticize, even in his thoughts?  Unless he found a third alternative in his personal affairs which respected the rights, wishes, and personal sovereignty of an individual whom he loved, and for whom he wished nothing but....what?

"Why shackle me?"  He was distracted by the sound of a too-familiar voice.  "If it were not for the  Herald-General himself, hanging back here with all of the mere dregs.  Tell me---and then tell my eagerly awaiting audience, Oligarch-Advisory old boy, as Korotayev Vaniamin Rodionovich would put it, what it's got to do with the ruble, imperatorsky, or imperators?"

The individual who'd spoken, pushing an autofile into his face and diverting the current of his thoughts, was none other than Rudolph Jeremey-Fyodorovich, Esquire, an obnoxious snoop employed by one of the many nongovernmental equivalents of the news service he received each morning.  Jeremey-Fyodorovich wore a Neptunian-blue satin tunic and trousers, lace-trimmed at cuff and collar.  Rather than the napoleon which might have been expected, the mask he had chosen was of himself, and quite transparent.

Lowering his own mask for a moment, that this professional backbiter could appreciate the hostile intensity of his expression, Oligarch-Advisory  Flownx Trezlinya-Silvertou, Executor-General to Premier Arkvitius X of the Cosmopolity of Romanova, held before his chest the ebon danisquare he had adopted when, for reasons significant to himself and nobody else, he had retired his ivory gorbachev years before.

"Jeremey-Fyodorovich, the womanly tone of voice you have begun affecting lately---you will remain silent when addressed by your superiors!---may be all the rage, but it inspires me an impulse to reach into your mouth and rip out your tongue.  This would not improve your elocution, true, but it would work wonders for my blood pressure!"

Jeremy-Fyodorovich stepped backward, stumbling against a tray-bearing kankrin.  "I...."

The Oligarch-Advisory interrupted.  "And I may yet do so if I hear you utter her name, or refer to any of my family, in public or private, ever again.  I trust that we understand each other, dear sir?"

Jeremey-Fyodorovich lowered the autofile, gulped behind his mask, bobbed his head in intimidated acknowledgment, and glanced about to see whether they had been overheard.  Raising his eyebrows as if spying a familiar face, he turned, thrust the autofile before him, and hurried away.  The Executor-General resumed his own ebon mask and his even blacker thoughts.

The mask was esoteric, but not altogether obscure.   Gogols and other 19th century writers were still admired, although the present age, he thought, bore a greater resemblance to the 16th or 17th.  Even now he cherished the hope that it might provoke revealing inquiry.  For a while, having given up the gorbachev, he had considered nevsky, indianajones, engels or marx, the more pointed borisgudunovs, even the accusing face of his deceased brother, Yuri.  He was acquainted with a widower who wore the likeness of his deceased wife, even a madwoman who had adopted that of a dead pet.  Each of these, whatever their respective merit, offered disadvantages with regard to his position at the Droom, or might have proven disquieting to his niece, who, in th is matter, was without blame.  How dearly he wished he could say the same for her more recent and embarrassing lapse.  He shook his head, realizing he would not be able to avoid thinking about it.Jeremey-Fyodorovich or no Jeremey-Fyodorovich

The fact was that, where her single and (he regretted) most conspicuous shortcoming was concerned, Trezlinya-Silvertou felt responsible.  His greatest error was that he had not caused the dance to be more emphasized in her education.  Maybe someday he'd attempt to tell her this?  If he did, was she mature enough to understand?  Forty-second-century Romanova, he often reflected, was a polyglot of complex, interweaving dances.  While Tris had grown to acquit herself admirably at the literal kind of dance---even Kostolom and his cosapients, suffering utter tonedeafness, adored watching her----he feared his failure had been total when it came to teaching her the figurative.

He reached into a pocket from absentminded habit and an example came to mind.  Each day, within the glittering Drooms and council chambers of many imperia-conglomerate (according to elaborate and stringent protocol), the most brilliantly conceived, carefully polished, sarcastically pointed pleasantries were exchanged between wimpy, expensively perfumed, richly overdressed diplomats and ministers plenipotentiary, in every respect (he admitted with the wry honesty which the privacy of his thoughts afforded him) like himself.

He withdrew his hand, and the object he sought, from his pocket.  Almost to the man, each availed himself of one or more perforate-ended inhalers which had originated aboard early starships where smoking with an open flame was asking for trouble.  Handsomely hand-wrought, exquisitely embellished, endowed with a broad spectrum of aromatics----stimulants and anti-stimulants---according to the wishes of their diverse and various owners, they were the forty-second-century equivalent (he was aware from his own historical studies which had provided an example for Tris's) of 18th-century snuffboxes.   Trezlinya-Silvertou raised his own engraved inhaler to his nostrils, breathing the narco-stimulant he preferred.  His mind cleared (or he had the impression it had) and he went ahead with his thoughts.

These tokens of conspicuous sophistication were often tucked into lace-ruffled sleeves beside diminutive, elegant, but quite deadly quickblades.  This, he thought, told the tale for an era entire.  He himself had soldiered with distinction (and a murderous reputation that still served him) as a youth in the Premier's wars.  Likewise, the perfumed, effeminate Jeremey-Fyodorovich, he knew, had commanded the first devastating assault against the poison-atmosphered b'Marcell. Artemovich-Kuzmin was rumored to have sired 50 bastards on Romanova alone, manifesting a differing yet undeniable virility.

Dance is an art, he reflected.  The medium common to all art is contrast, discernible in the dance being practiced at the Droom as effete affectation versus forthright brutality.  Those were the parameters of the age, sweeping outward off the pampered, savage capital worlds of each respective imperium-conglomerate, through the dark and endless Deep in concentric rings of apparent (and deceptive) contradiction, like the alternating peaks of the roughs which a cast stone sends across a body of calm water.  

Thus, at one end of a long and complicated chain of events, powdered, perfumed, and polished politicians promulgated protocol and policy.  At the other, in the unspeakable darkness of the Deep, starfleets clashed under the iron-fisted command of laced-uniformed and effeminate officers, reformed and clashed again.  Controlled by the same kind of men---soft at the most superficial level, brutal at the most fundamental---slave armies clawed and blasted each other for fee-simple ownership of the known galaxy.  Cossacks, dreaded devourers, mindless devastators, marched across the screaming faces of whole planets, raping men, women, and children alike, feeding upon their violated bodies, looking whole civilizations for their mincing masters, destroying whatever remained, leaving nothing behind but radioactive cinders.  And---even Trezlinya-Silvertou was shocked to think it----regardless of the particular styles in vogue, it had been this way ten centuries, a dozen lifetimes, fifty generations, a hundred decades, a thousand years.  Possibly it'd been this way from the start of human history.  

The man in the black mask sighed.  He had made the right decision after all.  It'd been extremely hard, especially when his niece happened to be a beautiful, intelligent, sweet miniature girl-child of fourteen for whom his love was most unstylishly sincere, just as he had loved her father, his own brother, and had later come to love her mother, his brother's wife.  But Tris, who sought to disown the facts of reality, was acting out a part whether she intended to or not.  When, on her account, the Oligarch-Advisory and Executor-General to the Premier of the Cosmopolity could be accosted, here on the floor of the Droom, by that filthy little insect, Jeremey-Fyodorovich, survival depended demanded that an end be put to such intransigence.

A blare of enfiled trumpets announced the entry of the Premier and his retinue.  Some movement was visible at the opposite end of the Droom, as dozens in gorgeous attire---ministers, coattail-riders, sycophants---were outshone and dwarfed by the magnificent form of Arkvitius himself.  The Executor-General shouldered his way through the crowd.  He, as the Premier's advisor, maybe even as his best friend, had a place on the upper dais.  The masses buzzed with anticipation.  

And, naturally, he could always claim he was doing it for her own benefit.  He was, in a cruel way, the way which prefers euthanizing its own injured housepets to leaving that distasteful chore to some poor servant.

Another concentric ring-ripple.  Another pair of contrasts.  Another set of apparent contradictions.  Love---and something other than love.  Tris would have to be disposed of, sent away for her own good, if not for that of the Cosmopolity, even if to a purgatory system like Kvadratriok.