Trusting myself to my solitude, I unclipped my terminal from its gauntlet and set the device on the tabletop, calling up the text of Impatian’s The First Emperors, a biography of the first eleven emperors. I’d finished his History of the Jaddian Wars while locked in Sagara’s vestibule. I set the thing to playing and soon a cool, artificial voice began reciting the text aloud.