Now, trailing sluggishly behind his racing thoughts, the slow-motion blooming of a light tingle of fear...Nora Everett, the wife of Abelard Mavrides...She had hurt him seventeen years ago with the coup in the Republic, though he was able to entangle her in charges of treason...The tinpot Republic was of no concern to him now, its willfully ignorant child-citizens flying kites and eating apples under the crazed charlatan gaze of Dr. Pongpianskul...No problem there, the future would ignore them, they were living fossils, harmless in themselves...