More deceptions, more phantoms.
He sauntered into the civilian part of town and was quickly on genial terms with factors and employees. Most of them found their work stimulating—they liked the Diomedeans—but were starved for new human contact. And none were under security. The trouble was, there had been no need for it. They knew a special Intelligence force came to search out the roots of the unrest which plagued them in their business. They totally approved, and did not resent not being invited to meet the investigators save for interviews about what they themselves might know. None had seen the entire team together; when not in the field, it kept apart, officers in the Residency, enlisted men in a separate barrack. Yes, rumor said it included a xeno or two. What of that?
Otherwise the community had only heard Lagard's brief announcement after the group was gone. ".... am not at liberty to say more than that human traitors have been trying to foment a rebellion among the Lannachska. Fortunately, the vast majority of the Great Flock stayed loyal and sensible. And now the key agents have been killed or captured. A few may still be at large, and information you may come upon concerning these should be reported immediately. But I don't expect they can do serious harm any longer, and I intend to proceed, with your cooperation, to remove the causes of discontent...."
The next Diomedean day, Flandry donned a heated coverall and a dome helmet with an air recycler, passed through pressure change in a lock, and circulated among natives in their part of town. Most knew Anglic and were willing to talk; but none had further news. He wasn't surprised.
Finding a public phone booth, he took the opportunity to call Chives when nobody who chanced to observe him was likely to wonder what a solitary operative was doing there. He used a standard channel but a language he was sure had never been heard on this world. The nearest comsat bucked his words across the ocean to Lannach where, he having paid for the service, they were broadcast rather than beamed. The relay unit he had left under the cliff made contact with the Shalmuan's portable.
"Yes, sir, at present the young lady is eating rations taken from her car before she abandoned it. They should last her as far as the sea, for she is setting a hard pace despite the overgrowth and rugged topography. I must confess I have difficulty following, since I consider it inadvisable to go aloft on my gravbelt. I feel a certain concern for her safety. A fall down a declivity or a sudden tempest could have adverse effects, and she does not let caution delay her."
"I think she can manage," Flandry said. "In any event, you can rescue her. What worries me is what may happen after she gets where she's going. Another twenty-four hours, did you estimate? I'd better try to act fast myself, here."
Susette didn't wish to lose time either. Three hours after she and Flandry had seen Lagard off, she was snuggled against him whispering how wonderful he had been.
"You're no slouch on the couch yourself, m'love," he said, quite honestly. "More, I hope?"
"Yes. As soon and often as you want. And do please want."
"Well, how about a breather first, and getting acquainted? A girl who keeps a bedside beer cooler is a girl whose sound mind I want to know as well as her delectable body." Warm and wudgy, she caressed him while he leaned over to get bottles for them, and stayed in the circle of his free arm when they leaned back against the pillows.
Too bad this can't be a simple romp for me, he thought. It deserves that. And by the way, so do I. Kossara was making chastity come hard.
He savored the chill brisk flavor while his glance roved about. The resident's lady had a private suite where, she hinted, the resident was an infrequent caller. This room of it was plushly carpeted, draped, furnished, in rose and white. An incense stick joined its fragrance to her own. A dressing table stood crowded with perfumes and cosmetics. Her garments sheened above his, hastily tossed over a chair. In that richness, her souvenirs of Home—pictures, bric-a-brac, a stuffed toy such as she would have given to a child—seemed as oddly pathetic as the view in the window was grim. Hail dashed against vitryl, thicker and harder than ever fell on Terra, picked out athwart blue-black lightning-jumping violence by an ember sunbeam which stabbed through a rent in the clouds. Past every insulation and heaviness came a ghost of the wind's clamor.
Kossara... Yes, Chives is right to fret about her while she struggles through yonder wildwood.
Susette stroked his cheek. "Why do you look sad all of a sudden?" she asked.
"Eh?" He started. "How ridiculous. ‘Pensive' is the word, my imp. Well, perhaps a drop of melancholy, recalling how I'll have to leave you and doubtless never see you again."
She nodded. "Me too. Though are you sure we won't—we can't?"
If I keep any control over events, yes, absolutely! Not that you aren't likable; but frankly, in public you're a bore. And what if Kossara found out?
Why should I care?
Well, she might accept my sporting as such. I get the impression hers is a double-standard society. But I don't believe she'd forgive my cuckolding a man whose salt I've eaten. To plead I was far from unique would get me nowhere. To plead military necessity wouldn't help either; I think she could see (those wave-colored eyes) that I'd have performed the same service free and enjoyed every microsecond.
Hm. The problem is not how to keep a peccadillo decently veiled in hypocrisy. The problem is what to do about the fact that I care whether or not Kossara Vymezal despises me.
"Can't we?" Susette persisted. "The Empire's big, but people get around in it."
Flandry pulled his attention back to the task on hand. He hugged her, smiled into her troubled gaze, and said, "Your idea flatters me beyond reason. I'd s'posed I was a mere escapade."
She flushed. "I supposed the same. But—well—" Defiantly: "I have others. I guess I always will, till I'm too old. Martin must suspect, and not care an awful lot. He's nice to me in a kind of absent-minded way, but he's overworked, and not young, and—you know what I mean. Diego, Diego Rostovsky, he's been the best. Except I know him inside out by now, what there is to know. You come in like a fresh breeze—straight from Home!—and you can talk about things, and make me laugh and feel good, and—" She leaned hard on him. Her own spare hand wandered. "I'd never have thought... you knew right away what I'd like most. Are you a telepath?"
No, just experienced and imaginative. Aycharaych is the telepath. "Thank you for your commendation," Flandry said, and clinked his bottle on hers.
"Then won't you stay a while extra, Ahab, and return afterward?"
"I must go whither the vagaries of war and politics require, amorita. And believe me, they can be confoundedly vague." Flandry took a long drink to gain a minute for assembling his next words. "F'r instance, the secrecy Commander Maspes laid on you forces me to dash on to Sector HQ as soon's I've given Diomedes a fairly clean bill of health—which I've about completed. My task demands certain data, you see. Poor communications again. Maspes tucked you under a blanket prohibition because he'd no way of knowing I'd come here, and I didn't get a clearance to lift it because nobody back Home knew he'd been that ultracautious." If I produced the Imperial writ I do have, that might give too much away.
Susette's palm stopped on his breast. "Why, your heart's going like a hammer," she said.
"You do that to a chap," he answered, put down his bottle and gathered her to him for an elaborate kiss.
Breathlessly, she asked, "You mean if you had the information you wouldn't be in such a hurry? You could stay longer?"
"I should jolly well hope so," he said, running fingers through her hair. "But what's the use?" He grinned. "Never mind. In your presence, I am not prone to talk shop."
"No, wait." She fended him off, a push which was a caress. "What do you need to know, Ahab?"
"Why—" He measured out his hesitation. "Something you're not allowed to tell me."
"But they'd tell you at HQ."
"Oh, yes. This is a miserable technicality."
"All right," Susette said fast "What is it?"
"You might—"
Flandry donned enthusiasm. "Darling! You wouldn't get in trouble, I swear. No, you'd be expediting the business of the Empire."
She shook her head and giggled. "Uh-uh. Remember, you've got to spend the time you gain here. Promise?"
"On my honor" as a double agent.
She leaned back again, her beer set aside, hands clasped behind her neck, enjoying her submission. "Ask me anything."
Flandry faced her, arms wrapped around drawn-up knees. "Mainly, who was with Maspes? Nonhumans especi'lly. I'd better not spell out the reason. But consider. No mind can conceive, let alone remember, the planets and races we've discovered in this tiny offside corner of the solitary galaxy we've explored a little bit. Infiltration, espionage—such things have happened before."
She stared. "Wouldn't they check a memory bank?"
Memory banks can have lies put into them, whenever we get a government many of whose officials can be bought, and later during the confusion of disputed succession, civil war, and sweeping purges. Those lies can then wait, never called on and therefore never suspected, till somebody has need for one of them. "Let's say no system is perfect, 'cept yours for lovemaking. Terra itself doesn't have a complete, fully updated file. Regional bitkeepers don't try; and checking back with Terra seldom seems worth the delay and trouble."
"Golloo!" She was more titillated than alarmed. "You mean we might've had an enemy spy right here?"
"That's what I'm s'posed to find out, sweetling."
"Well, there was only a single xeno on the team." She sighed. "I'd hate to believe he was enemy. So beautiful a person. You know, I daydreamed about going to bed with him, though of course I don't imagine that'd have worked, even if he did look pretty much like a man."
"Who was he? Where from?"
"Uh—his name, Ay... Aycharaych." She handled the diphthongs better than the open consonants. "From, uh, he said his planet's called Chereion. Way off toward Betelgeuse."
Further, Flandry thought amidst a thrumming.
This time he didn't bother to conceal his right name or his very origin. And why should he? Nobody would check on a duly accredited member of an Imperial Intelligence force—not that the files in Thursday Landing would help anyway—and he could read in their minds that none had ever heard of an obscure world within the Roidhunate—and the secrecy command would cover his trail as long as he needed, after he'd done his damage and was gone.
When at last, maybe, the truth came out: why, our people who do know a little something about Chereion would recognize that was where he glided from, as soon as they heard his description, regardless of whether he'd given a false origin or not. He might as well amuse himself by leaving his legal signature.
Which I'd already begun to think I saw in this whole affair. Dreams and shadows and flitting ghosts—
"He's about as tall as you are," Susette was saying, "skinny—no, I mean fine-boned and lean—except for wide shoulders and a kind of jutting chest. Six fingers to a hand, extra-jointed, ambery nails; but four claws to a foot and a spur behind, like a sort of bird. And he did say his race comes from a, uh, an analogue of flightless birds. I can't say a lot more about his body, because he always wore a long robe, though usually going barefoot. His face... well, I'd make him sound ugly if I spoke about a dome of a brow, big hook nose, thin lips, pointed ears, and of course all the, the shapes, angles, proportions different from ours. Actually, he's beautiful. I could've spent days looking into those huge red-brown whiteless eyes of his, if he'd let me. His skin is deep gold color. He has no hair anywhere I saw, but a kind of shark-fin crest on the crown of his head, made from dark-blue feathers, and tiny feathers for eyebrows. His voice is low and... pure music."
Flandry nodded. "M-hm. He stayed in your house?"
"Yes. We and the servants were strictly forbidden to mention him anywhere outside. When he visited the building his team had taken over—or maybe left town altogether; I can't say—he'd put on boots, a cowl, a face mask, like he came from someplace where men cover up everything in public; and walking slow, he could make his gait pass for human."
"Did you get any hints of what he did?"
"No. They called him... . consultant." Susette sat upright. "Was he really a spy?"
"I can identify him," Flandry said, "and the answer is no." Why should he spy on his own companions—subordinates? And he didn't bring them here to collect information, except incidentally. I'm pretty sure he came to kindle a war.
"Oh, I'm glad," Susette exclaimed. "He was such a lovely guest. Even though I often couldn't follow his conversation. Martin did better, but he'd get lost too when Aycharaych started talking about art and history—of Terra! He made me ashamed I was that ignorant about my own planet. No, not ashamed; really interested, wanting to go right out and learn if only I knew how. And then he'd talk on my level, like mentioning little things I'd never much noticed or appreciated, and getting me to care about them, till this dull place seemed full of wonder and—"
She subsided. "Have I told you enough?" she asked.
"I may have a few more questions later," Flandry said, "but for now, yes, I'm through."
She held out her arms. "Oh, no, you're not, you man, you! You've just begun. C'mere."
Flandry did. But while he embraced her, he was mostly harking back to the last time he met Aycharaych.
IX
{That was four years ago, in the planet-wide winter of eccentrically orbiting Talwin. Having landed simultaneously from the warships which brought them hither, Captain Sir Dominic Flandry and his opposite number, Qanryf Tachwyr the Dark, were received with painstaking correctness by the two commissioners of their respective races who administered the joint Merseian-Terran scientific base. After due ceremony, they expressed a wish to dine privately, that they might discuss the tasks ahead of them in frankness and at leisure.
The room for this was small, austerely outfitted as the entire outpost necessarily was. Talwin's system coursed through the Wilderness, that little-explored buffer zone of stars between Empire and Roidhunate; it had no attraction for traders; the enterprise got a meager budget. A table, some chairs and stools, a sideboard, a phone were the whole furniture, unless you counted the dumbwaiter with sensors and extensible arms for serving people who might not wish a live attendant while they talked.
Flandry entered cheerily, 0.88 gee lending bounce to his gait. The Merseian officer waited, half dinosaurian despite a close-fitting silver-trimmed black uniform, bold against snowfields, frozen river, and shrunken sun in crystalline sky which filled a wall transparency behind him.
"Well, you old rascal, how are you?" The man held forth his hand in Terran wise. Tachwyr clasped it between warm dry fingers and leathery palm. They had no further amicable gesture to exchange, since Flandry lacked a tail.
"Thirsty," Tachwyr rumbled. They sought the well-stocked sideboard. Tachwyr reached for Scotch and Flandry for telloch. They caught each other's glances and laughed, Merseian drumroll and human staccato. "Been a long while for us both, arrach?"
Flandry noted the inference, that of recent years Tachwyr's work had brought him into little or no contact with Terrans, for whatever it might be worth. Likely that wasn't much. The Empire's mulish attitude toward the aggrandizement of the Roidhunate was by no means the sole problem which the latter faced. Still, Tachwyr was by way of being an expert on Homo sapiens; so if a more urgent matter had called him—To be sure, he might have planned his remark precisely to make his opponent think along these lines.
"I trust your wives and children enjoy good fortune," Flandry said in polite Eriau.
"Yes, I thank the God." The formula being completed, Tachwyr went on: "Chydhwan's married, and Gelch has begun his cadetship. I presume you're still a bachelor?" He must ask that in Anglic, for his native equivalent would have been an insult. His jet eyes probed. "Aren't you the gaudy one, though? What style is that?"
The man extended an arm to show off colors and embroideries of his mufti. The plumes bobbed which sprang from an emerald brooch
holding his turban together. "Latest fashion in Dehiwala—on Ramanujan, you know. I was there a while back. Garb at home has gotten positively drab." He lifted his glass. "Well, tor ychwei."
"Here's to you," the Merseian responded in Anglic. They drank. The telloch was thick and bitter-fiery.
Flandry looked outdoors. "Brrr!" he said. "I'm glad this time I won't need to tramp through that."
"Khraich? I'd hoped we might go on a hunt."
"Don't let me stop you. But if nothing else, my time here is limited. I must get back. Wouldn't have come at all except for your special invitation."
Tachwyr studied Flandry. "I never doubted you are busy these days," he said.
"Yes, jumping around like a probability function in a high wind."
"You do not seem discouraged."
"N-no." Flandry sipped, abruptly brought his gaze around, and stated: "We're near the end of our troubles. What opposition is left has no real chance."
"And Hans Molitor will be undisputed Emperor." Tachwyr's relaxation evaporated. Flandry, who knew him from encounters both adversary and half friendly since they were fledglings in their services, had rather expected that. A big, faintly scaled hand clenched on the tumbler of whisky. "My reason why I wanted this meeting."
"Your reason?" Flandry arched his brows, though he knew Tachwyr felt it was a particularly grotesque expression.
"Yes. I persuaded my superiors to send your government—Molitor's—the proposal, and put me in charge of our side. However, if you had not come yourself, I imagine the conference would have proved as empty as my datholch claimed it would, when I broached the idea to him."
I can't blame the good datholch, Flandry thought. It does seem ludicrous on the face of it: discussions between Intelligence officers of rank below admiral or fodaich, who can't make important commitments—discussions about how to "resolve mutual difficulties" and assure the Imperium that the Roidhunate has never had any desire to interfere in domestic affairs of the Empire—when everybody knows how gleefully Merseian agents have swarmed through every one of our camps, trying their eternally damnedest to keep our family fight going.
Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra Page 37
