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.”
“Gollool” 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.