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was him. His voice, too. Silky smooth, you know? His English is per-
fect at least, it's not much different from what the other
TV people speak but he's some speaker. Really stirring up the crowds. You
could feel the emotion right through the TV."
The Imir frowned. "I had not expected him to get so far so soon. I thought we
had weeks, perhaps even months or a year. This changes everything. On national
television within a month of his arrival! Oh, my!"
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"You act like you expected it sooner or later," Joe noted. "You know where he
is, then?"
"Of course. It's been rather easy to find both him and the Baron; they are not
exactly engaged in secretive activ-
ity." He paused for a moment, as if making a decision, then said, "I was going
to wait until Marge was up, but
I suppose this can be done twice."
Macore came in, sat on a comer of Tiana's bed, then got up again fast. "That's
wet\" he complained, then sat down on the floor. They were all ears.
When the Baron had been exiled from Husaquahr, Macore explained, he'd been
sent first to the center of
Ruddygore's Earth operations, which was in Basel, Switz-
erland. He had remained there for more than three months, getting to know the
new world in which he'd found himself and checking out his place in it. He had
been very com-
fortable, living in a villa owned by Ruddygore just across the Rhine in
France, and had spent the first month doing nothing but reading everything in
French, German, and
English that he could get his hands on. He needed no spells or courses in
language or literacy; he proved himself unexpectedly adept at both. The Demon
Prince with whom he'd made his alliances in Husaquahr had been a good teacher
and supplier of certain books and reading mate-
rials from Earth.
He was, of course, a genius with a finely tuned ana-
176
VENGEANCE OF THE DANCING GODS
lytical mind; he had been the best theoretician of magic in the history of
Husaquahr, far beyond anyone else, no matter what their power. Being stripped
of his powers had not made him any less brilliant or knowledgeable.
He spent another six weeks or so on a sort of European grand tour, using a
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liberal stipend from Ruddygore's com-
pany, visiting Rome and much of Germany, France, and
England, using falsified Swiss papers that looked genuine enough to stand
almost any challenge. Ruddygore's Euro-
pean organization even got them in his own name.
Agents reported him both fascinated by the wonders of technology and appalled
by the contrasts such tech-
nology created. Still, it was hard to pin down just what real interests he
had, since he was fascinated by the ide-
ologies and tensions of the modem world with its omni-
present threat of nuclear holocaust and with the imbalances of wealth, yet he
was also apparently fascinated by com-
puters, space science, and technology, and even the mis-
fits and oddballs of society.
The computer, though, had particularly fascinated him;
as he was getting warnings that his funds were going to
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ods%203%20-%20Vengeance%20of%20the%20Danc.txt dry up if he didn't decide to do
something useful, he enrolled first in a quick and intensive course in how to
type, then in a London computer school. For all of its inanities, magic was
mathematical and he seemed to find in computer programming the same sort of
relationship.
He dropped the year-long course after only three months, not because he had
lost interest but because he had already progressed, not only beyond the
brightest pupil at the school, but beyond the brightest instructors as well.
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