I was rereading Orca last night and I found on pg 118 (paperback edition) an interesting link to tEoDM p o s s i b l e s p o i l e r Kiera is trying to figure out the organization Loftis belongs to and she muses: "One of them was the Imperial Surveillance Corps. They were responsible to the Prime Minister, when there was one, or to the Minister of Houses, when there wasn't. The Minister of Houses was presently an Issola named Indus..." It seems that if Pel made it to Vlad's time, he didn't make it as Prime Minister. Ken Padgett