EPILOGUE AND CODA

How Rod McBan CLI took his chance and enjoyed his inheritance is, of course, implicit in all that he had done and had been done to him up to his meeting with the Lord Jestocost. The details of how it all worked out are doubtless fascinating (and will doubtless be told later), but the reason for this chronicle ends now that the players have made the moves that will determine the outcome.

One piece remains to be removed from the board first, though. Old North Australia, Adm. Offices of the Commonwealth

"You, former Hon. Sec. of this government, are charged with going outside the limits of your Onseckish duties and of attempting to commit mayhem or murder upon the person of one of Her Absent Majesty's subjects, the said subject being Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan to the one-hundred-and-fifty-first generation; and you are further charged with the abuse of an official instrument of this Commonwealth government in designing and encompassing the said unlawful purpose, to wit, one mutated sparrow, serial number 0919487, specialty number 2328525, weighing forty-one kilograms and having a monetary value of 685 minicredits. What say you?" Houghton Syme CXLIX buried his face in his hands and sobbed. The Prediction Machine at the Abba Dingo

Jestocost was the only Lord of the Instrumentality who had bothered to put through a direct line to the prediction machine at the Abba Dingo, halfway up the immense column which supported Earthport. Most of the time the machine did not work at all; much of the rest was unintelligible, but Jestocost liked trying it anyhow.

The night of Rod's arrival he asked, "What is happening in the world?" Said the machine, "What? What? Be clear."

"Has anything started happening in the world today?" shouted Jestocost. There was a long delay. Jestocost thought of disconnecting, but finally the machine spoke, in the accents of ages past, "This-machine is cold, cold. This-machine is old, old. It is hard to tell. It is hard to know. But something has begun to happen. Something strange, like the first few drops of an immense rainstorm, like the tiny glow of an approaching comet. Change is coming to this world. It is not change which weapons can stop. This change whispers in like a forgotten dream. Maybe it will be good. Change, change… at the center of it all, there is a boy. One boy. This-machine cannot see him…" There was a long silence. Jestocost finally knew that the machine had nothing more to say. He cut the connection. And then, very deeply, he sighed.