Richard was lost from the very beginning of that sentence, so gave up altogether on trying to parse it and just watched D-squared’s face. Donald Cameron, then fifty-two, looked older than that, with swept-back silver hair and an impressive honker, swollen from the rich liquid diet of the ancient Cambridge college where he lived about half the time. But his complexion was pink and his manner was vigorous, probably because of all the brisk walks that he took around the castle on the Isle of Man where he lived the other half of the time. He’d checked in to his suite a few hours earlier, rested up for a bit, gone for one of those brisk walks, and stepped out onto the terrace only thirty seconds ago, whereupon he’d been surrounded by about four nerds, sufficiently highly ensconced in Corporation 9592’s food chain that they felt entitled to approach him. Richard knew for a fact that most of these people had stacks of Donald Cameron fantasy novels in their rooms in hopes of getting them signed, and that they were just sucking up to him long enough to feel comfortable with broaching such a request.