“We already agreed; he’s not an Iron.” Pol leaned against his desk, hands tucked in his pockets in case they started shaking. “He’s a Bronze construction worker, most likely a foreman or a guard.”
“Who hails from Madamar.”
“We’ll see. How long will it take to get the results on the Madamar search?”
Gyde was just sealing up the request. He went into the hall and motioned for an Iron runner to take it down to Research.
“I marked it ‘urgent,’ so the night staff will work on it. It ought to come in over the telex sometime tonight. By tomorrow morning, my friend…” Gyde winked. “Come in early.”
“I’ll take the first bus.”
Gyde strolled closer to Pol, getting very close. Gyde was occasionally given to displays of chummy, even paternal affection—a common-enough sight among Silvers. But this felt… different. Pol tensed up.
“What about tonight? What are you doing?” Gyde’s voice was a murmur.
“The usual. Have dinner, go to bed early. Do you need something done?”
“I was thinking we could go to the gymnasium together. Release some stress. Tomorrow will be a big day.”
Pol was momentarily speechless. Gyde’s words were seductive, but his smile was contradicted by glittering eyes—it was the smiling welcome of a dagger.
“Come on! I may be an old man, but I can still wrestle a middle-aged buck like you.”
“I trained this morning. I’m… tired.”
“You did not. I never see you at the gymnasium.” Gyde wrapped his hand around Pol’s bicep. “You have to stay fit, you know. Nothing more deformed than a flabby Silver.”
His hand was a shock. It gripped Pol’s arm, kneading it. There was something calculated in it, probing, testing. Pol felt a surge of repulsion and terror. He violently yanked his arm away.
He stood to his feet breathing hard, looking into Gyde’s half-lidded eyes. All he could see in those eyes was a cool and dangerous mercenary.
“Maybe next week,” Pol said stiffly.
“Sure. Sure.” Gyde’s face relaxed. The moment was over.
It was wrong, all wrong, but there was no way to salvage it. Pol mumbled his good-byes and left.
18.3. Seventy-Thirty Jill Talcott
The fertility clinic was a five-story monster stretching an entire city block. There was nothing remarkable about it other than its size. It was square and nondescript, with the occasional small blank window. It looked no less deserted than every other building in the City.
“Didn’t work very well, did it?” Nate commented as they stood on the street looking at it.
“What’s that?”
“Fertility.”
Jill agreed absently. She hadn’t wanted to come here this morning. She’d wanted to go to the antenna field, the one she still hadn’t gotten to see. But Nate had his heart set on the spaceport, and this had been the only alternative they could agree upon. Now that she was here, though, she was getting a wee bit curious.
“If fertility is their problem,” she said, “then it must have been a problem for a very long time. Species don’t die out overnight.”
“They would if they had your libido.”
“What!”
He grinned. “I said, ‘Let’s go inside; it would be neat-o!’ ”
She glared at him but couldn’t stop a laugh. “One of these days, Nate.”
“Don’t I wish.”
Inside, the power was on. Light panels lit a large, plain room with branching hallways. It was possibly a waiting room, though there were only two of the narrow molded chairs—both empty.
“Not expecting a crowd,” Nate remarked.
Jill looked around the room, but there was nothing much to see—plain white walls, no signs or directions or anything else. The hallways all looked the same. She tapped her collarbone, pondering which direction would be their best bet.
If fertility was the cause of this species’ demise, it would be an interesting point for her report. There had to be data somewhere, and with the help of the translator in her ear she might actually be able to read it. What she needed was a computer. She picked a hall and motioned for Nate to follow.
His tennis shoes made little squeaks on the future relative of a linoleum floor. Down each side of the hallway were regularly spaced doors, and at the end was another branching corridor. Jill tried a door on her right and found a small observation room, approximately four feet wide, consisting of a counter and computer facing a thick-paned window. Cautiously she stepped up into it.
The window looked into the neighboring room. This had to be where the “clinical” part of the clinic occurred. There was a bed in there—at least, that’s what she assumed it was. It was a large amalgamation of bedding, steel, and what looked like stuffing built up and around. It resembled a nest. Next to the bed was a table with shining metal instruments of ghastly design. A mechanical arm with a needlelike protuberance hung from the ceiling.
Jill’s lip curled in fascinated disgust. “Ewww,” she said, and then, because that wasn’t very scientific, “It doesn’t look too appealing, does it?”
“Yeah,” Nate breathed a shaky laugh. “If this is their idea of a romantic setting, no wonder they have problems feeling sexy. They need some James Brown and mood lighting in here.”
Trying not to think about Nate in the context of James Brown and mood lighting, Jill sat down at the monitor. This was the first computer she’d had access to since they’d tried the translators, and she was anxious to check it out.
“I’ll see if I can find some records. They should have data on birthrates, population, things like that.”
“ ‘Kay. I wanna look next door.”
He left her alone. In a minute she saw him enter the neighboring room from her peripheral vision. She looked. He picked up one of the instruments on the table, turned, and threatened her with it menacingly. Jill uttered another “ewww” and went back to her screen.
She was disappointed to see that although the words on the monitor were now in English, she still had no idea what she was looking at. There were many terms that were apparently untranslatable and remained in the alien text. She decided to try the speech approach.
“Computer,” she said, feeling slightly ridiculous, “show me the birthrates for the past two hundred years.”
The computer understood her perfectly. It brought up data, but it was arranged in a graph that could have been designed by Escher. It hurt her brain just looking at it. She squinted at the confusing lines and symbols. The numbers on the screen were incredibly low. If they were really birthrates, they ran in the mere dozens per… what? Month? Year? Decade? She was still trying to figure that out when she heard a muffled noise and glanced up.
Nate was being dragged from the clinical room—by an alien.
For a moment Jill was too surprised to respond. Then she got her feet under her and ran out the door. Nate was being pulled down the hall, his wrist gripped tight in the alien’s long greenish fingers.
“Come along, citizen!” the alien said. “Do your duty!”
The voice—the first Jill had heard coming from a living alien—sounded right off an old Alvin and the Chipmunks album. And there was something comic about the way the alien was marching Nate along. He looked fragile but stern, like a determined old man. Nate was trying to get away without hurting the thing.
“Hang on a minute. I think you have the wrong—”
“Do your duty!”
Nate glanced over his shoulder at Jill and they exchanged a confused look.
“Hey!” Jill said. “Hello!”
The alien paid her no mind. He stopped at a door and the door opened. Without further ado, the alien shoved Nate inside and the door closed.
From behind the door, Nate let out a bloodcurdling scream.