The details of his failure reached him later in his cell, anticlimactically, through a fat and pimply jailer inflated to bursting with the importance of guarding the first murderer in his generation.
"AL&O kept this quiet until the Council killing," the turnkey said, "but it had to come out when the Board of Order went after you. The Alcorians are telepathic. Santikh led the Ordermen to your place in the mountains. Fermiirig guided her."
He grinned vacuously at his prisoner, visibly pleased to impart information. "Lucky for you we don't have capital punishment any more. As it is, you'll get maximum, but they can't give you more than life."
Lucky? The realization of what lay ahead of him stunned Boyle with a slow and dreadful certainty.
A sentence of life.
Seven hundred years.
Not immortality—
Eternity.