eded. Furthermore, doesn't even have to
sign for it."

"Don't they sell it for revenue?"

"Nifflheim, no! This government doesn't need revenue. This government
supports itself by counterfeiting. When the Mastership needs money, they
just have Ridgerd Schferts print up another batch. Like everybody else."

"Then the money simply isn't worth anything!" Erskyll was horrified,
which was rapidly becoming his normal state.

"Who cares about money, Obray," he said. "Didn't you hear them, last
evening? It's un-Masterly to bother about things like money. Of course,
everybody owes everybody for everything, but it's all in the family."

"Well, something will have to be done about that!"

That was at least the tenth time he had said that, this evening.

* * * * *

It came practically as a thunderbolt when Khreggor Chmidd screened the
ship the next afternoon to report that a Proconsular Palace had been
found, and would be ready for occupancy in a day or so. The
chief-freedmen of the Management of Business of the Mastership and of
the Lord Chief Justiciar had found one, the Elegry Palace, which had
been unoccupied except for what he described as a small caretaking staff
for years, while two Masterly families disputed inheritance rights and
slave lawyers quibbled endlessly before a slave judge. The chief
freedman of the Lord Chief Justiciar had simply summoned judge and
lawyers into his office and ordered them to settle the suit at once.
The settlement had consisted of paying both litigants the full value of
the building; this came to fifty million stellies apiece. Arbitrarily,
the stelly was assigned a value in Imperial crowns of a hundred for one.
A million crowns was about what the building would be worth, with
contents, on Odin. It would be paid for with a draft on the Imperial
Exchequer.

"Well, you have some hard currency on the planet, now," he told Count
Erskyll, while they were having a pre-dinner drink together that
evening. "I hope it doesn't touch off an inflation, if the term is
permissible when applied to Adityan currency."

Erskyll snapped his fingers. "Yes! And there's the money we've been
spending for supplies. And when we start compensation payments....
Excuse me for a moment."

He dashed off, his drink in his hand. After a long interval, he was
back, carrying a fresh one he had gotten from a bartending robot en
route.

"Well, that's taken care of," he said. "My fiscal ma