Haavikko was facing him, crouched, his eyes wide, watching Chen's every movement, all pretense at drunkenness peeled from him. He swayed gently, as if about to attack, but it was clear to Chen that that was not Haavikko's intention. He was waiting for Chen to go for his knife, which lay just behind him by the door. It was what he himself would have done. Chen gave the slightest nod, suddenly respectful of the man's abilities. No one, not even Karr, had ever been fast enough to knock his knife from his hand.
"Well?" Haavikko said, clearly this time, the word formed like a drop of acid. "What do you want?"
Chen lifted his chin in challenge. "I'll tell you what I want. I want answers."
Haavikko laughed bitterly. "Answers? What do you mean?" But there was a slight hesitation in his eyes, the smallest trace of fear.
"I think you know more than you're letting on. I think you've done one or two things you're ashamed of. Things that aren't even in your file."
Chen saw how he blanched at that, how the skin about his eyes tightened.
"Who sent you? Was it Liu Chang"
"Liu Chang? Who's that?"
Haavikko snorted in disgust. "You know damned well who I mean. Liu Chang, the brothel keeper. From the Western Isle. Did he send you? Or was it someone else?"
Chen shook his head. "You've got me wrong, Lieutenant. I'm a soldier, not a pimp's runner. You forget where we are. This is Bremen. How would a pimp's runner get in here?"
Haavikko shook his head. "I'd credit him with anything. He's devious enough, don't you think?"
Who? he wondered, but said, "It's Chen . . . Captain Kao Chen."
Haavikko laughed sourly, then shook his head. "Since when did they make a Han captain?"
Slowly Chen's hand went to his jacket.
"Try anything and I'll break your neck."
Chen looked back at him, meeting his eyes coldly, his fingers continuing to search his pocket, emerging a moment later with his pass. He threw it across to Haavikko, who caught it deftly, his eyes never leaving Chen's face.
"Back off... Two paces."
Chen moved back, glancing about him at the room. It was bare, undecorated. A bed, a wardrobe, a single chair. A picture of a girl in a frame on the tiny bedside table. Haavikko's uniform tunic hung loosely on the door of the wardrobe where he had thrown it.
Haavikko looked at the pass, turned it in his hand, then threw it back at Chen, a new look—puzzlement, maybe curiosity—in his eyes.
Chen pocketed the pass. "You're in trouble, aren't you, Haavikko? Out of your depth."
"I don't know what you mean." /
"Oh, I think you do. Your friends have dumped you in it this time. Left you to carry the dan." Haavikko laughed scathingly. "Friends? I've no friends, Captain Kao. If you've read my file, you'll know that much about me."
"Maybe. And maybe that's just another pose—like the pretense of drunkenness you put on for me earlier."
Haavikko breathed deeply, unevenly. "I saw you earlier, when I went into the Mess. When you were still there when I came out, I knew you were following me."
;, "Who were you meeting?"
"I wasn't meeting anyone. I went in there to find something out."
Chen narrowed his eyes. "You weren't meeting Fest, then? I noticed that he entered the Mess just before you. You used to serve with him, didn't you?"
Haavikko was silent a moment, then he shook his head. "I wasn't meeting Fest. But yes, I served with him. Under General Tolonen."
"And under Major DeVore, too."
"I was ensign to DeVore for a month, yes."
"At the time of Minister Lwo's assassination."
"That's so."
Chen shook his head. "Am I to believe this crap?"
Haavikko's lips formed a sneer. "Believe what you like, but I wasn't meeting Few* If you must know I went in there to try to overhear what he was saying." >
"Are you blackmailing him?"
Haavikko bristled. "Look, what do you want? Who are you working for, Captain Kao?"
Chen met the challenge in his eyes momentarily, then looked about the room again. Something had been nagging at him. Something he didn't realize until he noticed the lieutenant's patch on the tunic hanging from the cupboard door. Of course! Haavikko had been the same rank these last eight years. But why? After all, if he was working for Ebert. . .
Chen looked back at Haavikko, shaking his head, then laughed quietly.
Haavikko had tensed, his eyes narrowed, suspicious. "What is it?"
But Chen was laughing strongly now, his whole manner suddenly different. He sat down on the bed, looking up at Haavikko. "It's just that I got you wrong. Completely wrong." He shook his head. "I thought you were working for Ebert."
"Ebert! That bastard!" Then realization dawned on Haavikko. "Then . . ." He gave a short laugh. "Gods! And I thought. . ."
The two men stared at each other a moment, their relief—their sudden understanding—clouded by the shadow of Ebert.
"What did he do?" Chen asked, getting up, his face serious, his eyes filled with sympathy. "What did he do to you, Axel Haavikko, to make you destroy yourself so completely?"
Haavikko looked down, shivering, then met Chen's eyes again. "It's not in the file, then?"
Chen shook his head.
"No. I guess it wouldn't be. He'd see to that, wouldn't he?" He was quiet a moment, staring at Chen sympathetically. "And you, Kao Chen? What did he do to make you hate him so?"
Chen smiled tightly. "Oh, it was a small thing. A matter of face." But he was thinking of his friend Pavel and of his death in the attack on the Overseer's House. That, too, he set down against Hans Ebert.
"Well. . . What now, Kao Chen? Do we go our own ways, or is our hatred of him strong enough to bind us?"
Chen hesitated, then smiled and nodded. "Let it be so."
THE REST of the Ping Tiao leaders had gone straight to the cruiser, clearly unnerved at being out in the open; but the woman, Ascher, held back, stopping at the rail to look out across the open mountainside. DeVore studied her a moment, then joined her at the rail, for a time simply doing as she did—drinking in the sheer grandeur of the view.
"The mountains. They're so different..."
He turned his head, looking at her. She had such finely chiseled features, all excess pared from them. He smiled, liking what he saw. There was nothing gross, nothing soft about her: the austere, almost sculpted beauty of her was accentuated by the neat cut of her fine jet-black hair, the trimness of her small well-muscled body. Such a strong lithe creature she was, and so sharp of mind. It was a pity. She was wasted on Gesell.
"In what way different?"
She continued staring outward, as if unaware of his gaze. "I don't know. Harder, I suppose. Cruder. Much more powerful and untamed than they seem on the screen. They're like living things . . ."
"They're real, that's why."
"Yes . . ." She turned her head slightly, her breath curling up in the cold air.
He inclined his head toward the cruiser. "And you . . . you're different, too. You're real. Not like them. This, for instance. Something in you responds to it. You're like me in that. It touches you."
Her eyes hardened marginally, then she looked away again. "You're wrong. We've nothing in common, Turner. Not even this. We see it through different eyes. We want different things. Even/from this." She shivered, then looked back at him. "You're a different kind of creature from me. You served them, remember? I could never do that. Could never compromise myself like that, whatever the end."
"You think so?"
"I know."
He smiled. "Have it your way. But remember this when you go away from here, Emily Ascher. I know you. I can see through you, like ice."
She held his gaze a moment longer, proudly, defiantly, then looked back at the mountains, a faint smile on her lips. "You see only mirrors. Reflections of yourself in everything. But that's how your kind thinks. You can't help it. You think the world's shaped as you see it. But there's a whole dimension you're blind to."