"Actually," went on Clea, "they'll be perfectly useless. At least as far as anyone knows now. They exist, so to speak, in a world that has little to do with ours. Like the world of imaginary numbers, the square root of minus one. Eventually we may find use for them, perhaps in the same way we use imaginary numbers to find the roots of equations of a higher order than two, because cosine theta plus _I_ sine theta equals _e_ to the _I_ sine theta, which lets us ..." "Ma'am?" "Well, that is to say they haven't been able to do anything like that with the sub-trigonometric functions yet. But they're fun." "Bend your head a little to the left, ma'am," was the maid's comment. Clea bent. "You're going to look beautiful." Four and five fingers wove deftly in her hair. "Just beautiful." "I hope that Tomar can get here. It's not going to be any fun without him." "But isn't the King coming?" asked the maid. "I saw his acceptance note myself. You know it was on very simple paper. Very elegant." "My father will enjoy that a good deal more than I will. My brother went to school with the King before ... before his Majesty's coronation." "That's amazing," said the maid. "Were they friends? Just think of it? Do you know whether they were friends or not?" Clea shrugged. "And, oh," said the maid, continuing, "have you seen the ballroom? All the hors d'oeuvres are real, imported fish. You can tell, because they're smaller than the ones your father grows." "I know," smiled Clea. "I don't think I've ever eaten any of Dad's fish in my life, which is sort of terrible, actually. They're supposed to be very good." "Oh, they are, ma'am. They are. Your father is a fine man to grow such great, good fishes. But you must admit, there's something special about the ones that come from the coast. I tasted one on my way up through the pantry. So I know." "What exactly is it?" Clea asked, turning around. The maid frowned, and then smiled and nodded wisely. "Oh, I know. I know. You can tell the difference." * * * * * At that moment, Jon Koshar was saying, "Well, so far you've been right." He appeared to be more or less standing (the room was dim, so his head and hands were invisible), more or less alone ("Yeah, I trust you. I don't have much choice," he added.) in the pantry of his father's mansion.