said. “And you may well be correct, too. Let’s exchange what we’ve
discovered–and, in between, give you some outdoor recreation. You look
space-worn.”
The next three darkling springtime days were pleasant. Kossara and
Trohdwyr stopped wearing weapons in the cave.}
Flandry sighed. “Aycharaych.” He had told her something of his old
antagonist. “Who else? Masks within masks, shadows that cast shadows …
Merseian operatives posing as Esperancians posing as Dennitzans whose
comrades had formerly posed as Avalonians, while other Merseian
creatures are in fact the Terran personnel they claim to be. Yes, I’ll
bet my chance of a peaceful death that Aycharaych is the engineer of the
whole diablerie.”
He drew on a cigarette, rolled acridity over his tongue and streamed it
out his nostrils, as if this mordant would give reality a fast hold on
him. He and she sat side by side on a saloon bench. Before them was the
table, where stood glasses and a bottle of Demerara rum. Beyond was the
viewscreen, full of night and stars. They had left the shining nebula
behind; an unlit mass of cosmic dust reared thunderhead tall across the
Milky Way. The ship’s clocks declared the hour was late. Likewise did
the silence around, above the hum which had gone so deep into their
bones that they heard it no more.
Kossara wore a housedress whose brevity made him all too aware of long
legs, broad bosom, a vein lifting blue from the dearest hollow that her
shoulderbones made at the base of her throat. She shivered a trifle and
leaned near him, unperfumed now except for a sunny odor of woman.
“Monstrous,” she mumbled.
“N-no … well, I can’t say.” Why do I defend him? Flandry wondered, and
knew: I see in my mirror the specter of him. Though who of us is flesh
and who image? “I’ll admit I can’t hate him, even for what he did to you
and will do to your whole people and mine if he can. I’ll kill him the
instant I’m able, but–Hm, I suppose you never saw or heard of a coral
snake. It’s venomous but very beautiful, and strikes without malice …
Not that I really know what drives Aycharaych. Maybe he’s an artist of
overriding genius. That’s a kind of monster, isn’t it?”
She reached for her glass, withdrew her hand–she was a light
drinker–and gripped the table edge instead, till the ends of her nails
turned white. “Can such a labyrinth of a scheme work? Aren’t there
hopelessly many chances for something to go wrong?”
Flandry found solace in a return to pragmatics, regardless of what
bitterness lay behind. “If the whole thing collapses, Merseia hasn’t
lost much. Not Hans nor any Emperor can make the Terran aristocrats give
up their luxuries–first and foremost, their credo that eventual
accommodation is possible–and go after the root of the menace. He
couldn’t manage anything more than a note of protest and perhaps the
suspension of a few negotiations about trade and the like. His
underlings would depose him before they allowed serious talk about
singeing the beard the Roidhun hasn’t got.”
His cigarette butt scorched his fingers. He tossed it away and took a
drink of his own. The piratical pungency heartened him till he could
speak in detachment, almost amusement: “Any plotter must allow for his
machine losing occasional nuts and bolts. You’re an example. Your likely
fate as a slave was meant to outrage every man on Dennitza when the news
arrived there. By chance, I heard about you in the well-known and
deservedly popular nick of time–I, not someone less cautious–”
“Less noble,” She stroked his arm. It shone inside.
Nonetheless he grinned and said, “True, I may lack scruples, but not
warm blood. I’m a truncated romantic. A mystery, a lovely girl, an
exotic planet–could I resist hallooing off–”
It jarred through him:–off into whatever trap was set by a person who
knew me? His tongue went on. “However, prudence, not virtue, was what
made me careful to do nothing irrevocable” to you, darling; I praise the
Void that nothing irrevocable happened to you. “And we did luck out, we
did destroy the main Merseian wart on Diomedes.” Was the luck poor silly