“What I don’t understand,” Hunt said to Cullen when they were alone, “is why they’d let Baumer reveal this JEVEX business to her when they must have known she was associating with us and the Ganymeans. If it’s such a big secret, with what sounds like big money involved, why show her it?”
“I wondered the same thing.” Cullen eased himself down onto one of the lab stools and rubbed his chin. “Unless. . .“ He looked over at Hunt. “It depends who the ‘they’ you’re talking about are. The Ichena run the couplers. They’re the ones who’d stand to lose if the traffic was shut down. But suppose Baumer was also working for a political group tied up with the cults. They’re not the same people. See my point? Letting Baumer come across like just another junkie blabbing about where he gets his fixes would be a good way of obscuring his political connection.”
Hunt took out a cigarette and thought while he lit it. “I think I see what you’re saying. A bit of a dirty trick, but it’s the other guys who’ll catch any comeback. But in the meantime it covers any tracks back to them.” He sat back and stared at the notes he had made. “Do you think it could be Eubeleus and the Axis?” he asked.
“I guess it could be—although he seems more interested in collecting his wagon train together at Geerbaine so they can go out and found the new world. And his main sidekick’s there with him. You know something, Vic, I’m even starting to think this Uttan stunt of theirs might be genuine.” Cullen clasped his hands behind his head and swiveled the stool with a foot until he was looking at Hunt. “But one thing’s sure: Baumer isn’t gonna tell us.”
“I guess not,” Hunt agreed with a sigh, pocketing his lighter.
In a suite in the residential part of PAC, Gina dried herself off with the warm-air blower in the shower, combed out her hair, and tottered back into the bedroom to slide gratefully between smooth, clean-smelling sheets. It had been a lot more exhausting than her experiment with VISAR. Or maybe things in general were just catching up with her.
After turning off the light, she went over the things that General Shaw had said in the room in another part of Shiban where she had been taken by the contact who had been waiting when she left the booths. She had said nothing to Hunt and Cullen that she shouldn’t have. Shaw must have come secretly aboard the Vishnu, too, she reflected. She hadn’t expected to see him again until her return to Earth—if at all—after meeting him in the briefing with Caldwell, when she had accepted the assignment. She remembered that quite vividly for some reason—as if it had happened’ yesterday.
It seemed unnecessarily cautious that she should not be allowed to bring people like Hunt and Garuth into the picture about the Jevlenese having a well-placed spy somewhere inside PAC; but the general had been adamant. She wondered if Baumer had been planted on Jevlen as an insider by whatever agency General Shaw was a part of. Very likely the part of the total picture that Baumer possessed was no larger than her own.
But certainly there was a lot more going on than she knew about, and it had interplanetary significance. The only wise thing was simply to forget the questions and follow orders.
As for Baumer, there was no conclusion to be drawn other than that he was completely mad. His faculty for recognizing even the most basic of familiar things seemed to be completely gone. The walls and doors, fittings and furnishings of the room in the medical facility where he was being confined, all of which were unexceptional, seemed to confound him with awe. He spent hours exploring the surfaces with his fingers and mumbling to himself as he fiddled with such simple devices as the catch on a drawer, or a pen lying on a desktop. He showed no understanding of anything more advanced, such as the touchpad controls of a COM panel unit, and made no attempt at operating them in the ways they were designed to function. And any kind of mechanism, however simple, seemed to bring on a mixture of wonder and terror. On one occasion he sat on the floor for almost an hour with a wastepaper bin that had a lid operated by a foot-pedal, working the lever over and over again. And it was nearly as long before he would even approach a set of scales standing on one side of the room.