“I said that, yes. It’s true!”
She sighed. “Sandy,” she said, “it didn’t happen that way. InterSec has checked the records really carefully. Every space flight was recorded, even during the war. We know for a fact that there weren’t any manned American rockets in space at the time of the war.”
“But,” Sandy said reasonably, “there must have been. That’s where the Hakh’hli found my parents.”
She shook her head. “The records show that there was one spacecraft that was out at the time,” she said. “Just one. It was a Mars orbiter. They had sent a probe down to the surface of the planet, and they were waiting for it to come back with samples. But it wasn’t American. It was Russian.”
He gaped at her. “Russian? Oh, no. That has to be wrong. The Hakh’hli told me my parents were American. The Major Seniors wouldn’t make a mistake like that. I mean, by the time the big ship got here the Hakh’hli had been monitoring broadcasts for fifty years. They’d know the difference.”
“That’s true,” Marguery agreed.
“So my parents couldn’t’ve been Russian!”
“Well,” she said sadly, “I would tend to agree with you about that. That was the only Russian spacecraft out, and it had only two people in it. I don’t see how they could have been your parents, though, because InterSec has double-checked the records and the cosmonauts were both men.”
Chapter 18
The countries of Earth, which are now broken up into commonwealths too tiny to be called “countries” anymore, try as much as they can to eliminate governmental power. Especially international power. They know they can’t get along without any at all, though. They do need some sort of network to deal with criminals—thieves, murderers, people who damage the peace and security of others in any way—who are quite capable of flitting from one commonwealth to another. (As everyone is, since there are no such things as “passports” or “visas.”) There aren’t as many criminals as there used to be, even considered as a percentage of the much diminished world population. But they are there, and they need to be dealt with. That’s what InterSec is designed to do. What it is not designed to do is keep track of alien visitors from space . . . but who else is there to do it?
“InterSec’s records are wrong!” Sandy shouted. “That’s impossible.”
Marguery didn’t answer. She looked very tired. She only shook her head.
“But if they’re right—what am I?” he howled.
Marguery took the question at face value and answered it. “You’re a man,” she said positively. “It also happens that you’re a man I like very much—couldn’t you tell that?”
“But—”
“But we don’t know how you got to be a man, exactly,” she agreed. “Right. That doesn’t change anything, does it?” She paused to cough. “I really don’t feel so well,” she said reflectively.
He wasn’t even listening. “I can’t believe what you said about my mother,” he told her somberly.
Marguery shrugged and made an effort to be responsive. “I’m really tired,” she said apologetically. “It’s been a pretty tough few days—spending all your waking hours with you, then as soon as you’re tucked in I have to go for briefing and debriefing. Find out everything else that’s been going on, so I’ll know what to ask you about.” She shook her head, and then added, “Maybe that’s why I’m acting this way. I can’t believe what I’ve been doing. I’m not in the habit of making love with the suspects I’m surveilling.”
“Suspects!”
“Well,” she said reasonably, “people that I’m assigned to keep an eye on. I didn’t mean for the lovemaking part to happen, Sandy. Ham’s going to be really ticked off.”
“That’s none of his business!” Sandy barked.
“Sandy, hon. Everything is InterSec’s business.” She shook her head, looking exhausted and worn.
Sandy’s heart melted. “Oh, Marguery,” he wailed, and reached out blindly toward her. They held each other for a moment, while Sandy shuddered and shook . . . until the tactile quality of the smooth, soft female flesh he was touching began to suggest possibilities to him, and he altered his grip.
Marguery fended him off, smiling wanly. “Not this time, hon. You’re almost too much, you know? You’ve got me sore.”
She released him suddenly to sneeze. “Actually, Sandy,” she said in the tone of someone making a not agreeable discovery, “I don’t feel particularly well for some reason.”
Sandy saw with concern that her lips were swollen. He scowled, perplexed. He had not expected anything like this. He knew that postcoital Hakh’hli were uniformly euphoric. Why weren’t Earth humans? Could they be this different? And if they were so different, if this sort of thing were normal, why in the world did they do it?
She had gotten back into her bathing suit and was wrapping both the damp towels around her, sitting as close to the electric heater as she could. All the same, she was shivering. She tried to smile at Sandy. She said, “It would probably be a good idea for us to get out of here. But this is the only chance we’ve had to talk in private. And there’s more.”
His heart sank. “What more?” he asked. What more could there possibly be?
“Oh, I don’t mean anything else about you, hon,” she said, trying to reassure. “There are some things that the Hakh’hli haven’t told us, and we don’t know what to make of them. The bugs, for instance.”
“I don’t know anything about bugs,” he said positively.
She explained. “The people at the lander have caught three new insects—well, technically they’re not insects, they say. Bugs, anyway. They’re all the same, and the entomologists say they’re not related to any Earthly species at all. And one of them was seen coming out of the lander when one of the Hakh’hli was standing in the doorway.”
“What do they look like?”
She made a restless gesture. “Big as my thumb,” she said. “They fly.”
“Oh,” said Sandy, enlightened and reassured. “I bet I know what they are. They’re just hawkbees. They’re harmless. Except to other bugs, I mean. A few got trapped in the lander with us, but you don’t have to worry about them. There wasn’t any queen with them, and so all we had were sterile males.”
She didn’t answer at first. He looked at her with concern. She was breathing hard, and her eyes were closed. Suddenly, without opening her eyes, she giggled. “Sterile males, hey? Remind you of anything?”
He frowned at her. “What are you talking about?” he demanded harshly. But she wasn’t listening to him. She was talking. At least, it seemed she thought she was talking, because her lips were moving and there were faint sounds. But even with his hearing aid almost touching her mouth Sandy could make out no coherent words.
Sandy knew what the word “delirious” meant. It was what people were in hospital beds, while the policeman was begging them to name their murderer; but he had had no previous experience of it at first hand.
It seemed probable that she should be gotten to medical attention as quickly as possible. But how?
There was no telephone in the room. There was no doorway that opened to the surface. There was no hope that Marguery could lead them back through the underwater passages to safety—even if they still had two air tanks.
Which they didn’t.
When he touched her again, Marguery’s skin was hot, and she was breathing very raggedly. Worse than that, one of her eyes was no longer closed; it was halfway open, but the pupil had rolled up under the lid so that she looked . . . she looked . . . the only word Sandy could find to fit the case was “dead.” And if she hadn’t been breathing so raggedly he might have believed that to be true.