“Very well, captain,” said the trader. “Good luck. I’ll expect you to be in the Twin Moons at 2100 hours tomorrow night. If not—”
“I know.” Langley drew a finger across his throat. “I’ll be there.”
Valti bowed, lowered his helmet, and left the same way he had come.
Langley could have wept and howled for sheer excitement, but there wasn’t time. He went out of the apartment and down the halls. They were deserted at this hour. The bridgeway beyond was still jammed, but when he took a grav-shaft going down he was alone.
It brawled and shouted in the Commons, crowds milled about him, in his drab university gown he met little respect and had to push his way. Down to Etie Town.
It lay on the border of the slum section, but was itself orderly and well policed. There were some humans living in or near it, he knew, hired help. A nonhuman had no interest in a woman, except as a servant. It would be the safest place for a girl thrown out of high-level to go. At least, it was the logical place to begin his search.
He had been a clumsy amateur, grown mentally paralyzed by his own repeated failures in a world of professionals. That feeling was gone now. The magnitude of his determination lent an assurance which was almost frightening. This time nothing was going to get in his way without being trampled down!
He entered a tavern. Its customers were mostly of a scaly, bi-pedal race with snouted heads, who didn’t need special conditions of atmosphere or temperature. They ignored him as he walked through the weird maze of wet sponge couches they favored. The light was dull red, hard to see by.
Langley went over to a corner where a few men in the livery of paid servants were drinking. They stared at him, it must be the first time a professor had come in here. “May I sit down?” he asked.
“Kind of crowded,” snapped a sulky-looking man.
“Sorry. I was going to buy a round, but—”
“Oh, well, then, sit.”
Langley didn’t mind the somewhat constrained silence that fell. It suited him perfectly. “I’m looking for a woman,” he said.
“Four doors down.”
“No... a particular woman. Tall, dark red hair, upper-level accent. I think she must have come here about two weeks ago. Has anyone seen her?”
“No.”
“I’m offering a reward for the information. A hundred solars.”
Their eyes widened. Langley saw avarice on some of the faces, and flipped his cloak back in a casual way to reveal his gun. Its possession was a serious offense, but nobody seemed inclined to cry out for the police. “Well, if you can’t help me I’ll just have to try somewhere else.”
“No... wait a minute, sir. Take it easy. Maybe we can.” The sulky man looked around the table. “Anybody know her? No? It could be inquired about, though.”
“Sure.” Langley peeled off ten ten-solar notes. “That’s to hire inquirers. The reward is extra. But it’s no good if she isn’t found inside... Hm-m-m... three hours.”
His company evaporated. He sat down, ordered another drink, and tried to control his impatience.
Time dragged. How much of life went in simply waiting!
A girl came up with a suggestion. Langley sent her off to look too. He nursed his beers: now, as never before, he had to have a clear head.
In two hours and eighteen minutes, a breathless little man panted back to the table. “I’ve found her!”
Langley’s heart jumped. He stood up, taking it slow. “Seen her?”
“Well, no. But a new maid answering her description did hire out to a Slimer—a merchant from Srinis, I mean—just eleven days ago. The cook told me that, after somebody else had tracked down the cook for me.”
The spaceman nodded. His guess had been right: the servant class would still know more gossip than a regiment of police could track down. People hadn’t changed so much. “Let’s go,” he said, and went out the door.
“How about my reward?”
“You’ll get it when I see her. Control your emotions.”
Five thousand years ago, a bibliophile acquaintance had made him read a tattered book some hundred years old—the Private Eye school—claiming it was something unique in the annals of pornography. Langley had been rather bored by it. Now, recognizing the prototype of his action-pattern, he grinned. But any pattern would do, in this amorphous world of low-level.
They went down a broad street full of strangeness. The little man stopped outside a door. “This is the place. I don’t know how we get in, though.”
Langley punched the scanner button. Presently the door opened, to reveal a human butler of formidable proportions. The American was quite prepared to slug a way past him if necessary. But he wasn’t a slave—aliens weren’t permitted to own humans. He had been hired once, and could probably be hired again.
“Excuse me,” said Langley. “Do you have a new maid, a tall red-head?”
“Sir, my employer values his privacy.”
Langley ruffled a sheaf of large bills. “Too bad. It’s worth a good deal to me. I only want to talk with her.”
He got in, leaving his informant to jitter outside. The air was thick and damp, the light a flooding greenish yellow which hurt his eyes. The outworlders would employ live servants for prestige, but must have to pay rather well. The thought that he had driven Marin to this artificial swamp was like teeth in his soul.
She stood in a chamber full of mist. Droplets of fog had condensed to glitter in her hair. Unsurprised eyes watched him gravely.
“I’ve come,” he whispered.
“I knew you would.”
“I’m... can I say how sorry I am?”
“You needn’t, Edwy. Forget it.”
They returned to the street. Langley paid off his informant and got the address of a hotel. He walked there, holding her hand, but said nothing till they were safely alone.
Then he kissed her, half afraid that she would recoil from him. But she responded with a sudden hunger. “I love you,” he said; it was a new and surprising knowledge.
She smiled. “That makes it mutual, I think.”
Later, he told her what had happened. It was like turning on a light behind her eyes. “And we can get away?” she asked softly. “We can really start over? If you knew how I’ve dreamed of that, ever since—”
“Not so fast.” The grimness was returning, it put an edge in his voice and he twisted his fingers nervously. “This is a pretty complicated situation. I think I know what’s behind it—maybe you can help fill in the gaps.
“I’ve proven to myself that the Technon founded the Society and uses it as a spy and an agent of economic infiltration. However—the Technon is stuck away in a cave somewhere. It can’t go out and supervise affairs; it has to rely on information supplied by its agents. Some of these agents are official, part of the Solar government; some of them are semiofficial, members of the Society; some are highly unofficial, spies on other planets.
“But two can play at the same game, you know. There’s another race around which has a mentality much like the Technon’s—a cold, impersonal mass-mind, planning centuries ahead, able to wait indefinitely long for some little seed to sprout. And that’s the race on Thrym. Their mental hookup practice makes them that kind: an individual doesn’t matter, because in a very real sense each individual is only a cell in one huge unit. You can see it operating in a case like the League, where they’ve quietly taken over the key position, made themselves boss so gradually that the Thorians hardly realize it even today.”
“And you think they have infiltrated the Society?” she asked.
“I know they have. There’s no other answer. The Society wouldn’t be turning Saris over to Brannoch if it were truly independent. Valti tried hard to rationalize it, but I know more than he does. I know the Technon thinks it still owns the Society, and that it’d never give Centauri an advantage.”
“But it has, you say,” she protested.