am not prone to talk shop.”
“No, wait.” She fended him off, a push which was a caress. “What do you
need to know, Ahab?”
“Why–” He measured out his hesitation. “Something you’re not allowed to
tell me.”
“But they’d tell you at HQ.”
“Oh, yes. This is a miserable technicality.”
“All right,” Susette said fast. “What is it?”
“You might–” Flandry donned enthusiasm. “Darling! You wouldn’t get in
trouble, I swear. No, you’d be expediting the business of the Empire.”
She shook her head and giggled. “Uh-uh. Remember, you’ve got to spend
the time you gain here. Promise?”
“On my honor” as a double agent.
She leaned back again, her beer set aside, hands clasped behind her
neck, enjoying her submission. “Ask me anything.”
Flandry faced her, arms wrapped around drawn-up knees. “Mainly, who was
with Maspes? Nonhumans especi’lly. I’d better not spell out the reason.
But consider. No mind can conceive, let alone remember, the planets and
races we’ve discovered in this tiny offside corner of the solitary
galaxy we’ve explored a little bit. Infiltration, espionage–such things
have happened before.”
She stared. “Wouldn’t they check a memory bank?”
Memory banks can have lies put into them, whenever we get a government
many of whose officials can be bought, and later during the confusion of
disputed succession, civil war, and sweeping purges. Those lies can then
wait, never called on and therefore never suspected, till somebody has
need for one of them. “Let’s say no system is perfect, ‘cept yours for
lovemaking. Terra itself doesn’t have a complete, fully updated file.
Regional bitkeepers don’t try; and checking back with Terra seldom seems
worth the delay and trouble.”
“Gollool” She was more titillated than alarmed. “You mean we might’ve
had an enemy spy right here?”
“That’s what I’m s’posed to find out, sweetling.”
“Well, there was only a single xeno on the team.” She sighed. “I’d hate
to believe he was enemy. So beautiful a person. You know, I daydreamed
about going to bed with him, though of course I don’t imagine that’d
have worked, even if he did look pretty much like a man.”
“Who was he? Where from?”
“Uh–his name, Ay … Aycharaych.” She handled the diphthongs better
than the open consonants. “From, uh, he said his planet’s called
Chereion. Way off toward Betelgeuse.”
Further, Flandry thought amidst a thrumming.
This time he didn’t bother to conceal his right name or his very origin.
And why should he? Nobody would check on a duly accredited member of an
Imperial Intelligence force–not that the files in Thursday Landing
would help anyway–and he could read in their minds that none had ever
heard of an obscure world within the Roidhunate–and the secrecy command
would cover his trail as long as he needed, after he’d done his damage
and was gone.
When at last, maybe, the truth came out: why, our people who do know a
little something about Chereion would recognize that was where he glided
from, as soon as they heard his description, regardless of whether he’d
given a false origin or not. He might as well amuse himself by leaving
his legal signature.
Which I’d already begun to think I saw in this whole affair. Dreams and
shadows and flitting ghosts–
“He’s about as tall as you are,” Susette was saying, “skinny–no, I mean
fine-boned and lean–except for wide shoulders and a kind of jutting
chest. Six fingers to a hand, extra-jointed, ambery nails; but four
claws to a foot and a spur behind, like a sort of bird. And he did say
his race conies from a, uh, an analogue of flightless birds. I can’t say
a lot more about his body, because he always wore a long robe, though
usually going barefoot. His face … well, I’d make him sound ugly if I
spoke about a dome of a brow, big hook nose, thin lips, pointed ears,
and of course all the, the shapes, angles, proportions different from
ours. Actually, he’s beautiful. I could’ve spent days looking into those
huge red-brown whiteless eyes of his, if he’d let me. His skin is deep
gold color. He has no hair anywhere I saw, but a kind of shark-fin crest