"If I may just insert here, sir," Priesly put in smoothly, "I have no quarrel at all with Cobra Justin Moreau. I agree with Governor Moreau that he is an outstanding and completely stable member of the Aventinian community. It is, in fact, the very fact that such a fine example of Cobra screening could still attack an unarmed man that worries me so."

Chandler grunted. "Mr. Moreau...?"

"No further comments, sir," Corwin said, and sat back down. Priesly had taken a chance with that interruption, he knew, and with a little luck it would wind up working against him. The thrust of his arguments, serious though they were, were still a far cry from the result he and Monse had almost certainly been trying for. If Monse had succeeded in triggering the combat reflexes programmed into

Justin's implanted nanocomputer, Priesly would have had a far stronger bogy to wave in front of both the Directorate and the populace as a whole.

Across the table, Ezer Gavin stirred. "May I ask, Mr. Chandler, what Cobra

Moreau's status is at the moment? I presume he's been suspended from his Academy duties?"

"He has," Chandler nodded. "The investigation is proceeding-much of it at this point into Mr. Monse's background, I may add."

Corwin glanced at Priesly, read no reaction there. Hardly surprising-he already knew that whatever Priesly's connection was with Monse, it was well buried.

"I'd like to also point out, if I may," Lizabet Telek spoke up with an air of impatience, "that for all the fuss we're generating-both here and on the nets," she added with a glance at Priesly, "this Monse character wasn't killed or even seriously injured."

"If he hadn't had that ceramic laminae on his bones he would have been,"

Atterberry put in.