If she had some technical help, she thought, absently rubbing her belly, she might be able to piece together whatever it was that Giyt had learned.
But help from whom? Was there anyone she could trust? Or would anyone she asked for help be just as likely to be part of the problem?
But she could not let Hagbarth get away with whatever he was up to.
So Rina faced up to the fact that if anything was going to be done, she would have to do it herself. She sat down before the screen again and attacked the problem of decoding the data packet from Earth. Although she hadn’t had much recent practice, it was like riding a bicycle, she found. Once she got started she remembered the skills Giyt had taught her. She set up a program to try every possible password, feeding in every word she could imagine Giyt including.
It took a while, but the program ultimately produced the password, which turned out to be “I guess I love Rina.”
She cried at that, but only for a bit. Then grimly she began to study the packet.
And it was all there.
Ex-Earth was a front for an American expansionist conspiracy that reached up into high levels of the administration. They were planning to take Tupelo over. The autofactory at the Pole had been secretly manufacturing weapons.
Rina sat back, considering. Then she called Mrs. Brownbenttalon. “It seems that I do need help,” she said. “Can you get me into the meeting?”
It was the first time Rina had been in the Hexagon since it was rearranged for the six-planet conference. The six little platforms for the members of the Joint Governance Commission had been replaced with a cluster of seats (or pads or trees) to accommodate the high officials from the home planets; there were from six to a dozen members of the appropriate species in each position, with most of the floor space given over to their staffs and experts. It was crowded. And as they were all talking at once, it was also hopelessly noisy. Rina’s translator button struggled valiantly to render scraps of the other languages into English for her, but it was unequal to the task. What came out was a sort of chowder of half sentences and expletives, and she finally took the thing out of her ear. It eventually took the best efforts of the chief Centaurian delegate, Mrs. Oneeyewanders, a female so august that she had not one but three husbands scuttling about in her fur, to restore something like order. When she screeched for quiet the rumblings of the crowd simmered down enough for Rina to finish her testimony. And all the while, there were the Hagbarths standing in the little cleared space next to her, giving her poisonous looks, shaking their heads in the simulation of reproof.
Poisonous looks were all they could manage. It had not been smart of Hoak Hagbarth to send all his fellow conspirators in the fire company to the job of cover-up at the Pole, because the ones that were left behind were not part of the conspiracy. Behind the Hagbarths stood a pair of the brawniest fire police left on the island, and neither of the Hagbarths dared move.
Then Rina accessed Giyt’s decoded packet from Earth, and everyone was still, Or nearly still apart from indignant whisperings to each other, as the record unrolled.
When it was over, Dr. Patroosh was the first to speak, glaring at Hagbarth. “You scum,” she said.
Then the Swiss delegate chimed in—speaking in French, Rina guessed; but her translator had not been equipped with French-language capability and so she could make nothing of it until the New Zealander spoke up. “I agree completely,” he said. “We will all transmit this complete record to our governments at once.”
“But it is all lies!” Hagbarth burst out. “She made it all up! Are you going to take the word of a whore against me?”
It didn’t do him any good. They were taking it; the evidence left no room for doubt. Rina got the button back into her ear again in time to hear Mrs. Oneeyewanders speak up for her; so did the Slug, on what grounds Rina could not imagine. Then the Kalkaboo piped up: “Exists here no problem believing statement of Earth-human female. Can make factuality check, surely. Immediately we can order stop to present clean-up at the Pole, then quickly dispatch six-species delegation up there for total discovery of truthfulness.”
It was the most sensible thing Rina had ever heard from a Kalkaboo, and it had its effect on Hoak Hagbarth. The man wilted before her eyes. He gave Rina an imploring look, while his wife, sobbing, clutched at his arm. But if he wanted to speak he had no chance; the whole assembly was talking at once again.
So it was over.
The accumulated fatigue of the last few days struck Rina then; she looked around for a place to sit down, failed to find one, squatted on the floor, her head bowed. It was a moment of triumph, but she couldn’t feel exultation. It only meant that now she had to face up to the real questions of life continuing without the presence of Evesham Giyt.
She didn’t even notice that the assembly had quieted until one of the fire police poked her. She looked up.
The Principal Slug had slithered his way to the delegates’ platform, clutching his pocket screen; he was showing it to the Slug delegate, who looked, and raised his forebody to speak. As Rina hurriedly replaced her translator he was saying, “—interesting news from ship terminal at dam. Unscheduled robot sub has arrived at terminal with passengers. They are three. Are hungry, cold, very, very dirty, but not in the least dead.”
XXIX
URGENT. ACTION REQUESTED.
Access attached files I (data secured by Evesham Giyt) and 2 (statements of Hoak Hagbarth and Olse Hagbarth at interrogation by Inter-Species Conference).
Urgently recommend immediate full-scale investigation of Extended Earth Corporation and all persons named in accompanying files. If allegations in attached files are supported, further recommend indictments for conspiracy to initiate military action on Tupelo, in violation of existing compacts. By unanimous decision of all five other species involved, all sessions of the conference are suspended until this matter is resolved.
As their boat raced across the lake to the dam, Lupe on one side of her, Mrs. Brownbenttalon and her husband on the other, Rina at last let herself cry. Mrs. Brownbenttalon examined the process with interest. “Leakage from eyes indicates sadness, I have information,” she called over the whine of the motor and the rush of the air. “This leakage not necessary, Mrs. Large Male Giyt. You husband alive okay; he remember robot sub can take home as easy as rocket, only slower. Like I say, he damn good son of a bitch; smart, too!”
At some point, Rina told herself, she should explain to Mrs. Brownbenttalon that there were such things as tears of joy. Not now. Now she was fully concentrated on peering ahead at the dock area, looking for the person she most wanted to see in all the worlds. There were Delt technicians supervising the hoisting of cargo from the base of the dam to the lakeshore; there were Slugs watching the proceedings with a proprietary air—well, the ship terminal was in Slugtown. But it wasn’t until the boat had actually pulled up to the shore that she saw the hoist coming up again, and this time bearing two figures—well, three if you counted the little one poking his snout out of his Centaurian mate’s fur. Beside her Mrs. Brownbenttalon squealed and rushed to greet them, but not so fast that she beat Rina to the scene.