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us.”
    “I don't like such mysteries,” she said.
    “Neither do I. Yet it is like old times.”
    She smiled. “Like old times.”
    I put my arm around her, and she melted into me. Those old times had been horrible, but not without their redemptions.

Bio of a Space Tyrant 5 - Statesman
    Chapter 2 — DREAM
    Our approach to Saturn was not direct. Saturn is not a single political entity; like Jupiter, it has several major and minor nations. We were going to the Union of Saturnine Republics, which occupied virtually all of the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere was dominated by the People's Republic of the Middle Kingdom, and the rings and moons were all under other control. Thus we avoided these and went to the USR's major artificial ring station, where Spirit and I had been once before, when I was Governor of the Jupiter state of Sunshine. From there we transferred to a ferry to the great port city of Vostok, and thence to a flight to the capital, Scow. Or rather, in the native rendition, Skva; no need to Saxonize it here.
    I'm sure that Chairman Khukov was a busy man, but he made time for us. Within an hour of our arrival we found ourselves in his private suite, seated in comfort. He had aged visibly, with what hair remaining to him turning off-gray, and he had put on weight—but what does one expect of my generation? His appearance was not the basis of his office. We conversed in English, for Spirit did not speak Russian and Khukov's knowledge of Spanish was never advertised. His talent was like mine: He read people, and therefore could manage them. This was what had brought each of us to power. We trusted each other because each of us understood the other in a way no other person could. Differences of language or culture or politics became insignificant in the face of this fundamental understanding.
    “The pirate attack,” Khukov said, coming right to the point. His mind evidently remained sharp. I had first met him when I was the Jupiter ambassador to Ganymede and he was the military liaison there; we had taught each other our native languages. “I'm sure you know it was no doing of mine.”
    “The personnel had Middle Kingdom identification,” I said.
    “So my personnel inform me. But though relations between the USR and the Middle Kingdom are not perfect, those folk are not that clumsy. They would not carry such identification.”
    “So we assumed,” I agreed. “But who, then? I presume you did not advertise our presence aboard the ship.”
    “It was what you would term an inside job. I have lost the services of a trusted secretary.”
    “I know how that can be,” I murmured, thinking of Shelia, my woman of the wheelchair who had sacrificed her life for me. Her death had tipped me into a siege of madness leading in due course to my ouster as Tyrant.
    “No one was to know of your presence,” Khukov said. “We used our fastest small ship, though the gees were restricted in deference to your age. To all others it was a routine courier voyage. The crew itself—”
    “Was unprepared for combat,” I finished. “I preempted control on an emergency basis; no onus should attach to the captain.”
    “None does; I recognized your touch the moment the news reached me. He will not suffer. But the episode is an embarrassment to me, and heads have rolled.”
    “You know the origin and motivation of the attack?”
    “The nomenklatura.”
    Spirit and I looked blank.
    Khukov smiled. “Brace yourselves for a small lecture on Saturnine internal politics, for this is relevant to your interest. You know that we are theoretically a classless society, unlike you of the decadent capitalistic planets. But we have classes, and of these the most privileged is the nomenklatura, the bureaucratic stratum of the Party. Those in all the key positions of the Party, the military, and the secret police belong to this hereditary class. I belong. They pass themselves off as mere civil servants, but they are the true