City of 4,000 Spies
The resort city of Lell lies on the remarkable Lake of Many Colors, where 100,000 fragments merge and re-merge into billions of patterns. One can spend multiple lifetimes watching its fantastic, ever-swirling waves and never (not once) see a representation repeated.
However, no one comes to Lell to watch the Lake. Lell is an international city where guests from a million different sectors are fully welcomed, as long as their cash holds out! It is where one comes to mine the most precious mineral of all — the mineral of information. They say that the resort city of Lell has over 4,000 spies. That’s not counting the taxi drivers, the hotel staff, the Farqat dealers in the casino, the Unie barkeepers, the Antonine fortune-tellers, and the ever-present Koopsie girls, any one of whom will gladly gather whatever information that is requested, for a sizable tip.
“Rarrko, the second son of the Great Nobleman of Sassko, was probably Lell’s most recognizable spy. He was handsome, athletic, and ingenious. He wore flashy high-end fashion and drove a speeder that broke 1.75. He was seldom seen without a bevy of beautiful females and was often described with that old-fashioned word “playboy” (although no one knew what it meant).
He looked the part of a spy. He moved in the nuanced way that spies moved.
If you asked him, “what is your occupation?”, he would smugly smile and say, “I am a spy, of course.” If you would follow up with another question, “who are you spying for?” he would again smirk, “Who ever pays me the most.”
However, he was already wealthy beyond imagination.”
“It was not his first time visiting the City-by-the-Lake. Indeed, he had been coming to Lell ever since be began his career as a professional spy, some many assignments ago.
But, this time, it served his purpose, to appear to be a first-time visitor, a wide-eyed provincial from the distant, rural sectors. He even chose a cover name that aptly expressed his new identity. His identity device now gave his name as Bruzch Jes Bumpkin, a purveyor of exotic materials, traveling from a sector of no military or economic value. A nobody from a nowhere place.
On many previous trips, he had been easily recognizable as Dosko Rarrko, the second son of the Nineteenth Great Nobleman of Sassko. His arrival was always a media event. He wore the latest, very flashy, high-end fashion. He was nearly always accompanied by a bevy of beautiful females. He moved in the nuanced way that spies moved. He was frequently seen at the gaming tables, wagering many hundreds of thousands.
However, this time he was not coming to Lell as probably its most noticeable spy.
No, this time he came to the lovely City by the Lake as a bumpkin, truly named “bumpkin.”
It was a Rarrko joke. A typical Rarrko joke. One that only he could appreciate.
He knew that the old English word “bumpkin” came originally from the Old Dutch language, where the word “bum” meant one’s rear end, so “bum kin” implied someone who was from the very most anal of realms. In its later English derivation, it came to mean one who was a ‘block of wood.’
So, Dosko Rarrko was coming to Lell as a bumpkin, a block of wood, from the very most anal of regions.
A Rarrko joke. One that only he understood.”