Targovi wants to spy on the enclosed community of the island, Zacharia. It would also be advantageous for him to be a guest of the Zacharians for a while. How does he go about this? He travels with Axor and Diana Crowfeather so he must persuade the Zacharians to offer hospitality to all three - but this is easy.
Diana is young and attractive, therefore will be welcomed by promiscuous male Zacharians. Axor, the first ever Wodenite visitor to Daedalus, can tell Zacharians about his planet and about many other worlds that he has visited and is:
"'...a leading authority on the fascinating Ancients...'" (p. 343)
- at least according to Targovi. (Axor is indeed studying the Ancients.)
Axor, delightful as a person, should be an asset in this provincial sector. Also, in what has become a fluid galactic situation, full both of dangers and of opportunities, Zacharians dare not refuse Axor's deeply thought out nonhuman input, different alike from either a Merseian or a Cynthian perspective.
Is Targovi overdoing it at this point? He wants something so he works overtime to persuade Pele Zachary that she wants it as well. After a lengthy pause, she concedes that his case is plausible and should be considered further.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I can see Targovi being one of the leaders of the trader teams set up by Nicholas van Rijn if they had both lived in the same era!
Ad astra! Sean
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