Sickening!
So this was Heller's idea of charging out and getting the job done!
In a flash of insight, I realized what I was up against. Love! There are warnings in the standard espionage texts: they give a lot of biological tables stressing that it is irrational; they go over a lot of examples of how even Royal houses have been destroyed because the practical marriage orders were flouted by young Princes and Princesses who stupidly fell in love with somebody else; they don't tell you how to use it but they warn against pairing a male and female agent. They say there's no way to thwart it short of shooting somebody. Well, the professors might not be able to use it, but I could. I owed my rise in the Apparatus to being cunning.
I was cunning now. In a very sweet voice, I said, "You had better get cleaned up. In . . . ," and I ostentatiously looked at my watch, ". . . twenty minutes you have an appointment in the training rooms with the Countess Krak." Holy Gods! He came out of that chair like he'd been catapult-launched.
He had washed his white exercise suit the night before but in this airless cubicle it wasn't dry and he frantically rigged a heat fan. He rushed about, showered, dried and combed his hair and dressed and all in about eight minutes. Then, of course, we had to wait three or four minutes and he sat there fidgeting. I turned off the Homeview: I couldn't take any more echo orchestra and down scale love ballads – they came through to me more like funeral dirges and if I didn't get Heller off this planet, there was going to be one more – mine.
Still a minute early, we arrived outside the training rooms. He went through the door.
I was about to follow him when a hand stopped me. It was the Countess Krak's training assistant, a very ugly brute. "Message just came, Officer Gris. You're wanted at the central guard office at Camp Endurance." What now? In some alarm I made sure two guardsmen were posted outside the door and went tearing off.
It always takes time to get through the tunnel and it was almost an hour later when I arrived at the Camp Endurance guard office.
The filthy Apparatus duty officer looked over his sheets in some mystery. "Oh, yes. There was a general call for you . . . wait. It is logged as just before dawn. Good Devils, Officer Gris! Didn't they find you this morning? I am sorry, Officer Gris, but it's for the fortress internally and we didn't get more than the general recording of it. . . ." I cut him off. "I answered that call hours ago! Cancel it."
"But we're not sending it out!" he said. "It was for the internal ..." In brand-new alarm, I realized I had been fooled!
The Countess Krak! She had wanted me out of the way. What were they planning? A breakout?
Real terror gripped me at the thought of what Lombar would do to me if Heller got loose! I grabbed a tunnel zipbus that didn't zip fast enough to satisfy me. I raced through the fortress and back to the training rooms. Gods knew what I would find!
I burst in.
It was the most peaceful scene you ever saw. Heller was sitting in the chair she'd gotten for him; the recorded strip player was on the table running, putting out quiet roars; the Countess Krak was sitting in the other chair. She was dressed in the silver elastic suit; her hair was tied with the silver ribbon with flowers on it; her feet, relaxed, were cased in the silver ankle boots: I will say she looked heart-stoppingly beautiful. She had her elbows on the other side of the table and her chin was cupped in her palms. She was looking at him adoringly.
I sidled over, pretty mad, really. "That was a cute trick you pulled," I hissed, too low for Heller to hear.
She turned her face to me. Her eyes were a smoky blue and shining. She had a half-smile on her lips. Utterly relaxed, she whispered back, "Isn't he beautiful?" I was disgusted. But then, I thought, even a female lepertige probably falls in love from time to time. I went out in the passageway: I really couldn't stand to look at them. To me, the situation was too dangerous.
Using my communications disc, I got an underground line to the Section 451 office in Government City. My chief clerk there – an old criminal named Bawtch – didn't sound very happy that I had been retained as Chief of the Section. He told me they had been shuffling papers perfectly all right and hoped I didn't have any orders: he said they didn't need any disorders right now. It wasn't really insolent; that's just the way Bawtch is. He soured on life some seconds after he was born and has made a profession of deteriorating ever since.
I did find out that some new texts and paperbacks had come in on the just arrived freighter from Earth as well as recent issues of the New York Timesand Wall Street Journal,a couple of newssheets they print on that planet. I told him to put the lot on the Spiteos shuttle and he sighed and hoped I wouldn't be calling again soon.
I dawdled around, made some notes on what I was supposed to get going. Then I went back in to see how the language lessons were progressing.
What? They were no longer at the table! I stepped further inside and there they were in the middle of a big training platform.
She was teaching him unarmed combat? My orders were that no espionage tactics . . . Then I checked myself. They weren't doing unarmed combat. Heller was showing her the latest dance routines! The "Shatter" had been popular in the last few months. The male lunges out and the female flips away; the female lunges and the male rolls away: back and forth, somewhat athletic but kind of monotonous. They had a timing ticker, used to coordinate acrobats, and it was going to a dance beat. Heller was showing her the foot positions and the arm reaches.
She had killed a guard just reaching toward her. And here it was happening. In sort of like the frozen state where you watch an inevitable accident about to occur, I stood there and watched this. Sooner or later he was going to touch her on a reach. . . .
He did! I expected sudden death.
"Oh," she said, "I have been here so long I am all out of date. Let's see: when you lunge, I am supposed to roll, not just stand there like a ninny and get hit!" He lunged again and once more she didn't roll and his hand touched her shoulder. The Countess Krak being clumsy? Hard to teach? Never!
And he finished the lunge by taking her in his arms and holding her close to him. And they just stood there.
And then he kissed her!
I expected fireworks. But the only fireworks was a sort of invisible glow that I could practically feel clear over where I was. She dropped her head back and looked up at him. "Oh, Jet," she whispered.
I came out of my daze. This would never, never do. I clapped my hands together three times sharply. I had to do it again, louder, before they took any notice of me.
They finally walked over, holding hands, looking at each other like a couple of kids sharing some secret.
"We're due," I said severely, "for our appointment with Doctor Crobe. Come along right now, Heller!"
Chapter 3
The biological section occupied a complex series of old stone vaults and rooms about a hundred feet below ground level. Unlike the rest of the fortress and despite the black stone, the place was glaringly lit. I never have been all the way through that section: it is too repulsive; but it consists of libraries, operating rooms, freeze banks and vast compartments of vials, vials, vials and tanks, tanks, tanks. If Spiteos smells bad, it is nothing compared to the biological section: they have a habit of spilling cultures which putrefy and leaving around discarded flesh and body parts that rot. It is about as sanitary as a sewer.