You lose the habit of maneuvering in low-G or zero-G if you don’t practice it, and I was long out of practice. Also I was rubbernecking. All this was new to my experience. Gateway is an asteroid, tunneled out by the Heechee long ago and every interior surface lined by them with their favorite blue-glowing metal. The Food Factory, Heechee Heaven, and all of the other large structures I had visited in space were also Heechee construction. It was confusing for me to be for the first time in a very large human-made space artifact. It seemed more alien than anything Heechee. No familiar blue glow, just painted steel. No spindle-shaped chamber at the core. No prospectors looking sick-scared or triumphant, no museum collections of bits and pieces of Heechee technology found here and there around the Galaxy. What there was plenty of was military personnel in skintights and, for some reason, crash helmets. The curiousest thing of all was that although every one of them wore a weapons holster, all the holsters were empty.
I slowed down to point this out to Essie. “Looks like they don’t trust their own people,” I commented.
She shook me by the collar and pointed ahead, where the ensign was waiting. “Do not talk against hosts, Robin, not until are behind their backs, anyway. Here. This must be place.”
Not a minute too soon; I was beginning to run out of breath with the exertion of puffing myself along a zero-G corridor. “Right inside, sir and ma’am,” said the ensign hospitably, and of course we did as he said.
But what was inside the door was only a bare room with a couple of sit-down lashings around the walls, and nothing else. “Where’s the brigadier?” I demanded.
“Why, sir, I told you we’re all pretty busy right now. He’ll see you soon’s he can.” And, with a shark’s smile, he closed the door on us; and the interesting thing about that door, we both perceived at once, was that there was no knob on the inside surface.
Like everybody, I have had fantasies of being arrested. You’re busy with your life, herding fish or balancing somebody’s books or writing the great new symphony, and all of a sudden there’s a knock on the door. “Come along without resistance,” they say, and snap the cuffs on and read you your rights, and the next thing you know you’re in a place like this. Essie shivered. She must have had the same fantasies, though if ever there was a blameless life it was hers. “Is silly,” she said, more to herself than to me. “What a pity there is no bed here. Could put the time to use.”
I patted her hand. I knew she was trying to cheer me up. “They said they were busy,” I reminded her.
So we waited.
And half an hour later, without warning, I felt Essie stiffen under the hand I had on her shoulder, and the expression on her face was suddenly raging and mad; and I felt a quick, hurting, furious jolt to my own mind- And then it was gone, and we looked at each other. It had only lasted a few seconds. Long enough to tell us just what it was they had been busy about, and why they had carried no weapons in their holsters.
The terrorists had struck again-but only a glancing blow.
When at last the ensign came back for us he was gleeful. I do not mean that he was friendly. He still didn’t like civilians. He was happy enough to have a big smile on his face and hostile enough not to tell us why. It had been a long time. He ~’didn’t apologize, just conducted us to the commandant’s office, grinning all the way. And when we got there, pastel-painted steel walls with its West Point holoscape on the wall and its sterling silver smoke eater trying vainly to keep up with his cigar, Brigadier Cassata was smiling, too.
There were not very many good explanations possible for all this secret joffity, so I took a long leap in the dark and landed on one of them. “Congratulations, Brigadier,” I said politely, “on capturing the terrorists.”
The smile flickered, but came back. Cassata was a small man, and pudgier than the military medics must have preferred; his thighs bulged out at the hems of his olive-drab shorts as he sat on the edge of his desk to greet us. “As I understand it, Mr. Broadhead,” he said, “your purpose here is to interview Mrs. Dolly Walthers. You may certainly do that, considering the instructions I have received, but I can’t answer your questions about security matters.”
“I didn’t ask any,” I pointed out. Then, as I felt Essie’s why-you-antagonize-this-creep? glare burning the back of my neck, I added, “Anyway, it’s very kind of you to let us do it.”
He nodded, obviously agreeing that he was very kind. “I’d like to ask you a question, though. Would you mind telling me why you want to see her?”
Essie’s glare was still burning, which kept me from telling him that I did mind. “Not at all,” I lied. “Mrs. Walthers spent some time with a very good friend of mine, whom I am anxious to see. We’re hoping she can tell us how to get in touch with, uh, with my friend.”
It was not a lot of use skipping the gender-revealing pronoun. They had surely interrogated the hell out of poor Dolly Walthers and knew that there were only two people I could mean, and of the two it was not at all likely that I would call Wan a friend. He looked at me in a puzzled way, then at Essie, then said, “Walthers is certainly a popular young lady. I won’t keep you any longer.” And he turned us over to the ensign for the conducted tour.
As a tour guide, the ensign was a flat failure. He didn’t answer questions; he didn’t volunteer information. There was a lot to be curious about, too, because the Pentagon was showing signs of recent trouble. Not physical damage, so much, but when the station had gone crazy for the earlier minute of madness the brig was damaged. Its locking program had been crashed by the duty guards. Fortunately they had wrecked it in the open position; otherwise, there would have been some sorry skeletons starving to death in the cells.
The way I found out about it was by passing through a tier of cells and observing that they were all open, with armed MPs squatting boredly in the corridors to make sure the inmates stayed inside. The ensign paused to talk briefly to the guard officer and, while we waited, Essie whispered:
“If didn’t catch terrorists, what would brigadier be nice to you for?”
“Good question,” I answered. “Here’s one back. What did he mean about her being a very popular young lady?”
The ensign was scandalized by our talking in ranks. He cut short the chat with the MP lieutenant and hustled us along to a cell like any other cell, door standing open. He pointed inside. “There’s your prisoner,” he said. “You can talk to her all you like, but she doesn’t know anything much.”
“I realize that,” I said, “because if she did, you surely wouldn’t let us see her at all, would you?” I got the hot flash of another of Essie’s glares for that. She was right, too. If I hadn’t annoyed him, the ensign might have had the common decency to move back a few steps so that we could talk to Dolly Walthers in private, instead of posting himself firmly at the open door.
Or might not. The latter theory is the one that got my vote.
Dolly Walthers was a child-sized woman with a childish, high-pitched voice and bad teeth. She was not at her best. She was scared, fatigued, angry, and sullen.
And I was not all that much better. I was wholly, disconcertingly aware that this young woman before me had just spent a couple of weeks in the company of the love of my life-or one of the loves of my life-in the top two, anyway. I say this lightly enough. It wasn’t a light thing. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know what to say.
“Say hello, Robin,” Essie instructed.
“Miz Walthers,” I said obediently, “hello. I’m Robin Broadhead.”
She had manners left. She put out her hand like a good child. “I know who you are, Mr. Broadhead, even not counting that I met your wife the other day.” We shook hands politely and she flashed a hint of a sad smile.
It wasn’t until some time later, when I saw her Robinette Broadhead puppet that I knew what she had been smiling at. But she looked puzzled, too. “I thought they said there were four people who wanted to see me,” she said, peering past the stolid ensign in search of the others.