. Frequently they take poison or inhale lethal
gas; this fellow had his personal trigger man shoot him through the
head. Dalla was one of the guests of honor, along with this Harnosh of
Hosh. They'd made rather elaborate preparations, and after the shooting
they got a detailed and apparently authentic spirit-communication from
the late Garnon. The voluntary discarnation was just a routine social
event, it seems, but the communication caused quite an uproar, and rated
top place on the System-wide newscasts, and started a storm of
controversy.

"After the shooting and the communication, Dalla took the officiating
gun artist, one Dirzed, into her own service. This Dirzed was spoken
of as a generally respected member of something called the Society of
Assassins, and that'll give you an idea of what things are like on
that sector, and why I don't want to send anybody who might develop
trigger-finger cramp at the wrong moment. She and Dirzed left the home
of the gentleman who had just had himself discarnated, presumably for
Dalla's apartment, about a hundred miles away. That's the last that's
been heard of either of them.

"This attempt on Dalla's life occurred while the pre-mortem revels
were still going on. She lived in a six-room apartment, with three
servants, on one of the upper floors of a three-thousand-foot
tower--Akor-Neb cities are built vertically, with considerable
interval between units--and while she was at this feast, a package was
delivered at the apartment, ostensibly from the Reincarnation
Institute and made up to look as though it contained record tapes. One
of the servants accepted it from a service employee of the apartments.
The next morning, a little before noon, Dr. Harnosh of Hosh called her
on the visiphone and got no answer; he then called the apartment
manager, who entered the apartment. He found all three of the servants
dead, from a lethal-gas bomb which had exploded when one of them had
opened this package. However, Hadron Dalla had never returned to the
apartment, the night before."

* * * * *

Verkan Vall was sitting motionless, his face expressionless as he ran
Tortha Karf's narrative through the intricate semantic and
psychological processes of the First Level mentality. The fact that
Hadron Dalla had been a former wife of his had been relegated to one
corner of his consciousness and contained there; it was not a fact
that would, at the moment, contribute