“When was the job description written?” I asked.
He smiled again.
“Fairly recently.”
“I see. And what would be the duties be?”
“They would commence with a special assignment, of an investigatory nature.”
“Investigating what?”
“The disappearance of the star-stone.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I have to admit that the matter appeals to my curiosity,” I said, “but not so much that I would be willing to work for you.”
“You would not actually be working for me.”
I got hold of my cigarettes and lit one before I asked, “For whom, then?”
“Give me one of those,” said a familiar voice, and the scruffy-looking dog rose and crossed over to my bedside.
“The Lon Chaney of the interstellar set,” I observed. “You make a lousy dog, Ragma.”
He unsnapped several sections of his disguise and accepted a light. I could not make out what he looked like inside.
“So you went and got yourself shot again,” he said. “It is not as if you had not been warned.”
“That is correct,” I said. “I did it with my eyes open.”
“And reversed,” he said, pushing aside my blanket and staring downward. “The scars are on the wrong leg for the wounds you sustained in Australia.”
He let the blanket fall and went to hunker beside my table.
“Not that I needed to look,” he added. “I overheard things about your wonderful reversed heart on the way in. And I sort of felt all along that you had to be the idiot who was fooling around with the inversion unit. Mind telling me why?”
“Yes,” I said, “I would mind.”
He shrugged.
“All right. It is still a bit early for malnutrition. I’ll wait.”
I looked back at Nadler.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” I said. “For whom would I be working?”
This time he grinned.
“Him,” he said.
“Are you kidding? When did the State Department start hiring wombat impersonators and guide dogs? Nonresident alien ones, at that?”
“Ragma is not a State Department employee. He is lending his services to the United Nations. On coming to work for us you would immediately go on loan to the special UN task force he heads.”
“Sort of like a library book,” I said, looking back toward Ragma. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
“That is why I am here,” he said. “As you are obviously aware, the artifact generally known as the star-stone is missing. You were apparently in possession of it for a time, and as a consequence you are the focus of interest for a number of parties concerned with its recovery-for a variety of reasons.”
“Paul Byler had it?”
“Yes. He was commissioned to construct a display model.”
“Then he was pretty careless with it.”
“Yes and no. A most peculiar man. Professor Byler, and the subject of a coincidence that complicated matters in a fashion that could not have been foreseen. You see, he was approached to undertake the job because he was considered one of the best qualified persons about for that sort of work. He had done all manner of clever things involving synthetics and crystals and such in the past. And he produced a beautiful specimen, one that a reviewing board was actually incapable of distinguishing from the supposed original. A tribute to the man’s skill? So it seemed, at first. I do not know how the deception could have been uncovered by your people in the ordinary course of events.”
“He kept the original and gave them back a copy, along with a copy of the copy?”
“Nothing quite that simple,” Ragma said. “As it turned out, the object they gave him to duplicate was not the star-stone. A substitution had actually taken place much earlier-within minutes, as we understand it now, of the formal receipt of the stone by the Secretary General of the United Nations. Perhaps you saw that event televised?”
“I guess everyone did. What happened?”
“One of the guards exchanged it for a false stone while conveying it to the vault. The exchange went undetected, he made off with the genuine item and Professor Byler received the counterfeit for duplication.”
“Then how could Paul have any part in … ?”