"Zakalwe, I had no idea. Let me offer you my apologies and those of the entire Special Circumstances Section; no, all of Contact; no: the entire Culture; no: all intelligent species."
"Sma, you remorseless bitch, I'm trying to be serious."
"No, I don't think you are. Maps…"
"But it's true! They turn them the wrong way up!"
"Then there must," Diziet Sma said, "be a reason for it."
"What?" he demanded.
"Psychology," Sma and the drone said at the same time.
"Two suits?" Sma said later, when he was making his final equipment selection. They were still in the armoury mini-bay, but Skaffen-Amtiskaw had gone off to do something more interesting than watch a kid shop for toys.
He heard the accusatory tone in Sma's voice, and looked up. "Yes; two suits. So what?"
"Those can be used to imprison somebody, Zakalwe; I know that. They're not just for protection."
"Sma; if I'm lifting this guy out of a hostile environment, with no immediate help from you guys because you have to stand off and be seen to be pure — fake though that might be — I have to have the tools to do the job. Serious FYT suits are numbered among those tools."
"One," Sma said.
"Sma, don't you trust me?"
"One," Sma repeated.
"Goddamn it! All right!" He dragged the suit away from the pile of equipment.
"Cheradenine," Sma said, suddenly conciliatory. "Remember; we need Beychae's… commitment, not just his presence. That's why we couldn't impersonate him; that's why we couldn't tamper with his mind…"
"Sma, you're sending me to tamper with his mind."
"All right," Sma said, suddenly nervous-looking. She clapped her hands once softly, looked a little embarrassed. "By the way, Cheradenine, ah… what exactly are your plans? I know better than to ask for a mission profile or anything formal, but how do you mean to get to Beychae?"
He sighed. "I'm going to make him want to come to me."
"How?"
"Just one word."
"A word?"
"A name."
"What, yours?"
"No; mine was supposed to be kept a secret when I was advisor to Beychae, but it must have leaked out by now. Too dangerous. I'll use another name."
"Ah hah." Sma looked expectantly at him, but he went back to choosing between the various bits of equipment he'd picked out.
"Beychae's in this university, right?" he said, not turning to look at Sma.
"Yes; in the archives, almost permanently. But there are a lot of archives and he moves around a lot, and there are always guards."
"Okay," he told her. "If you want to do something useful, try finding something that the university might want."
Sma shrugged. "It's a capitalist society. How about money?"
"I'll be doing that myself…" he paused, looked suspicious. "I will be allowed plenty of discretion in that area, won't I?"
"Unlimited expenses," Sma nodded.
He smiled. "Wonderful." He paused. "What source? A tonne of platinum? Sack of diamonds? My own bank?"
"Well, more or less your own bank, yes," Sma said. "We've beea building up something called the Vanguard Foundation since the last war; commercial empire, comparatively ethical, expanding quietly. That's where your unlimited expenses will come from."
"Well, with my unlimited expenses I'll probably try offering this university lots of money; but it would be better if there was some actual thing we could tempt them with."
"All right," she said, nodding. Then her brow wrinkled. She indicated the combat suit." What did you call that thing?"
He looked puzzled, then said, "Oh; it's an FYT suit."
"Yes; a serious FYT suit; that's what you said. But I thought I knew all the nomenclature; I've never heard that acronym before. What does it stand for?"
"It stands for a serious fuck-you-too suit." He grinned.
Sma made a clicking noise with her tongue. "Should have known better than to ask, shouldn't I?"
Two days later, they stood in the hangar of the Xenophobe. The very fast picket had left the GSV a day earlier, slung at the Voerenhutz cluster. It had accelerated hard, and now it was braking hard. He was packing the gear he would need into a capsule that would take him down to the surface of the planet where Tsoldrin Beychae was; the initial stage of his in-system journey would be on a fast three-person module; it would loiter in the atmosphere of a nearby gas-giant planet. The Xenophobe itself would wait in interstellar space, ready to provide support if needed.
"Are you positive you don't want Skaffen-Amtiskaw to come with you?"
"Absolutely positive; keep that air-borne asshole to yourself."
"Some other drone?"
"No."
"A knife missile?"
"Diziet; no! I don't want Skaffen-Amtiskaw or anything else that thinks it can think for itself."
"Hey; just refer to me as though I'm not here," Skaffen-Amtiskaw said.
"Wishful thinking, drone."
"Better than none at all, so above par for you," the machine said.
He looked at the drone. "You sure they didn't issue a factory-recall on your batch number?"
"Myself," said the drone, sniffily, "I have never been able to see what virtue there could be in something that was eighty per cent water."
"Anyway," Sma said. "You know all the relevant stuff, yes?"
"Yes," he said tiredly. The man's tanned, smoothly muscled body rippled as he bent, securing the plasma rifle in the capsule. He wore a pair of briefs. Sma — hair still tousled from bed, for this was early morning by ship time — wore a jellaba.
"You know the people to contact?" she fretted. "And who's in charge and on what side…"
"And what to do if my credit facilities are suddenly withdrawn? Yes; everything."
"If — when you get him out — you head for…"
"The enchanting, sunny system of Impren," he said tiredly, in a sing-song voice, "Where there are lots of friendly natives in a variety of ecologically sound space Habitats. Which are neutral."
"Zakalwe," Sma said suddenly, taking his face in both hands and kissing him. "I hope this all works out."
"Me too, funnily enough," he said. He kissed Sma back; she pulled away eventually. He shook his head, running his gaze down and up the woman's body, grinning. "Ah… one day, Diziet."
She shook her head and smiled insincerely. "Not unless I'm unconscious or dead, Cheradenine."
"Oh. I can still hope, then?"
Sma slapped his backside. "On your way, Zakalwe."
He stepped into the armoured combat suit. It closed around him. He flipped the helmet back.
He looked suddenly serious. "You just make sure you know where —»
"We know where she is," Sma said quickly.
He looked at the floor of the hanger for a moment, then smiled back into Sma's eyes.
"Good." He clapped his gloves together. "Great; I'll be off. See you later, with any luck." He stepped into the capsule.
"Take care, Cheradenine," Sma said.
"Yes; look after your disgusting cloven butt," Skaffen-Amtiskaw said.
"Depend on it," he said, and blew both of them a kiss.
From General Systems Vehicle to very fast picker to small module to the lobbed capsule to the suit that stood in the cold desert dust with a man encased inside it.