This seemed to be taking security a bit far. What the hell could the screens show if the Seiners kept them switched off? For that matter, what could they betray if turned on? He knew where he was. He knew where he was going, at least for the short run.
Was it some subtle psychological trick? A maneuver to accustom them to flying blind?
He dithered over a choice of couches.
The knot behind his ear, containing the non-dispersible parts of the instel-tracer, seized him with iron, spiked fingers. He had been switched on by the Bureau.
Why now? he wondered, staggering with the pain. They were supposed to wait till the lighter made orbit.
The thin, pale girl who had done the form reductions rushed toward him. "Are you sick?"
Her expression was one of genuine concern. He was more shaken by that than by this Bureau treachery. He had lived under the gun for years now. He was unaccustomed to strangers caring.
Her concern was not the bland, commercially dispensed pablum of a professional hostess, either. She wanted to help.
I want fired across his mind.
"Yes. A migraine attack. And my medicine is packed."
She steadied him. "Sit down here. I'll get you something."
He dropped onto the couch. A devil kicked the back of his skull with a steel-toed boot. It was a vicious little critter. It kept hammering away. He could not restrain a groan.
The headache became a bass drumbeat overshadowing his other pains. He looked up into the girl's pale blue eyes. They were perfectly suited to her pale complexion and colorless hair. He tried a smile of gratitude.
"Be back in a minute," she told him. "Hang on." Off she hurried, her hips moving in a languorous way that belied her haste. BenRabi's head left him no time to appreciate the nicety.
His frayed nerves jumped. They had migraine tablets on hand? That was strange. And her curiosity. Why was she interested in his health? She had become intrigued and apprehensive the instant he had mentioned migraine.
He had stretched the truth this time, but he had had headache trouble all his life. He had gobbled kilos of painkillers in his time.
Still, he had not been bothered recently. The susceptibility was noted in his medical file as a cover for the pain his tracer would cause...
Why the hell switch him on now?
His headaches were a mental thing, Psych had declared. They were caused by unresolved conflicts between his Old Earth origins and the demands of the culture into which he had climbed.
He did not believe it. He had never met a Psych he trusted heaving distance. Anyway, he had had headaches even before he had begun to consider enlisting.
For at least the hundredth time he asked himself why the Bureau had implanted an imperfect device. He answered himself, as always, with the observation that the tracer was the only way they had to follow a Seiner ship to a starfish herd.
Completely nonmetal, the tracer was the only device that could be smuggled aboard without being detected.
There was no satisfaction in knowing the answers. Not when they were so damned unpleasant. He wished to hell that he could take a vacation. A real vacation, away from anything that would remind him of who and what he was. He needed time to go home and get involved in something with known, realizable, and comfortable challenges. He longed for the private universe of his stamp collection.
The Seiner girl returned with another of those big, warm smiles. She carried a water bottle in one hand, a paper pillbox in the other. "This should put that right," she said. That damned smile tried to eat him up. "I brought you a dozen. That should last the whole trip."
He frowned. How long would they be aboard this piece of flying junk?
"I asked if I could stay with you till we make orbit. Jarl turned me down. Too much else for me to do." She smiled, felt his forehead.
He had had a feeling she would report him to somebody. It was the way she had reacted to his mention of migraine.
What was so remarkable about a headache? Even a migraine? Something was wobbling on its axis and he could not get a grip. The pain just would not let him think.
Hell. He was probably just feeling the first ground tremors of culture shock. Fly with it, Moyshe, he told himself. You've raced a sunjammer in the starwinds of the Crab... What could the lady do that was less predictable, or more terrifying?
She was leaving. He did not want her to go. "Wait." She turned. His heart did a teenager's flop. "Thank you. My name's benRabi. Moyshe benRabi." Now wasn't that a gimp way of feeling for an opening? But she responded with a quick little smile.
"I know, Moyshe. I remember from your papers. Mine's Coleridge. Amaranthina Amaryllis Isolte Galadriel de Coleridge y Gutierez." She yielded a half-laugh because of his rising eyebrows. "Mother was a reader. Amy's good for everyday."
There was a long, unsure moment. It was that period of uncertainty preluding potential relationship where he did not know if he dared open up a little more. She said, "I'm in Liquids Systems too."
He nodded. She had left the door open a crack. It was plain that it was up to him to use or ignore it.
Some words finally came, but too late. She was walking away. Maybe later, then.
I want returned to his mind, stimulated by the girl's invitation. Could a woman be his need? No. Not all of it, though having one around might be oil on the seas of his mind.
He had been hunting his Grail for a long time. Though he believed himself a cripple when dealing with them, the occasional woman had fallen his way. None of them had been panaceas. Alyce's ghost usually got in the way.
The Bureau supported his quest, knowing he was searching. Psych did not miss much. They might even know what he needed. Whatever, his masters were certain they would show a return on their investment.
Few of the Bureau's agents were sane in the accepted sense. It recruited obsessives intentionally. BenRabi did not think that sane men would make good operatives.
It took a madman to want into Intelligence in the first place.
He smiled, mocking himself.
The lighter shuddered, rocked, shoved against his back. He was on his way to the orbiting Starfisher.
He watched Mouse, who was three rows ahead of him. The small man trembled as if suffering from a palsy. The getting off the ground part of space travel seemed to be the only terror his universe held. His reactions to everything else seemed as intense as those of a stone.
"So the Rat's chicken."
The Sangaree woman was on the other side of the aisle, smiling. He had not seen her sit down. Did he have to take this and the pain too?
Four: 3047 AD
The Olden Days, The Broken Wings
Mouse was right. The outfit didn't whisper for days. Niven's tension dissolved. He started living his cover.
He began reviewing psychiatric statistics at Angel City's medical center. Bureau planners had calculated the cover mission both to gather information of potential interest and to keep the opposition undecided.
On the surface there was no logical reason for a prime agent to spend all his time developing a mental-illness profile for an outpost city. And even less sense in it for the Starduster.
He found the data intriguing. He began enjoying it.
Then he met the woman.
She materialized at the edge of his vision for an instant. She was long, willowy, dark-haired. High, large, firm breasts locked a stunning holographic picture into his mind forever.
She vanished before he could get a better look.
His papers hit the floor. He grabbed, wondering if wishful thinking had bitten him. Those knockers...
It was lust at first sight.
Then she was peeking back around a grey metal cabinet in open-mouthed curiosity. Niven looked up into dark eyes. He dropped his notes again. Bewilderment danced across her features.