“Then you cannot be correct. Cruelty and greed are very different things. Cruelty is delight in the pain of others. Greed is an insatiable desire to possess. You do not like the result of either one—unless the greed and cruelty are your own. You avenge yourself upon them by calling them evil. There is no difference in kind between your position and that of a woman who shouts “bad dog” when the puppy soils the carpet. The difference is in degree. Only.”

The president pressed a button on his desk. “I think we’d best git down to business.”

Gideon nodded. “So do I.”

“I talked to you the way I did, ’cause I wasn’t sure you was the right man for this job. You are. A wizard’s what people call you, an’ if anybody’s qualified for this, you’re the one.”

Gideon rarely smiled and did not smile now, though there may have been a gleam of humor in his disturbingly dark eyes. “The only evil man meets the only qualified man,” he whispered.

“Not really—come in, John! I said if there was only one evil man in the whole world, it’d have to be Bill Reis. There’s a hell of a lot of evil men in the world.”

“Three in particular,” the man the president called John added.

“We haven’t gotten to that yet, John, an’ I don’t think we will.” The president motioned toward a chair. “Sit down.”

“My error, Mr. President. I didn’t know you were excluding the Senate.” John was forty plus, and starting to get fat. The thick, round lenses of his glasses gave the impression of blindness.

“Explain our problem,” the president told him. “Our problem with Bill Reis.”

“Sure. Do you know who he is, Dr. Chase? That will save some time.”

Gideon shook his head.

“He was a major contributor to President Ingstrup’s first campaign. Also to his second, though that doesn’t really come into it. Major contributors are often given ambassadorships. Perhaps you’re aware of that.”

“My father was an ambassador,” Gideon remarked. “He was the U.S. ambassador to the only intelligent nonhumans known to science. . . .” He paused.