Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

“All right. You owe me that. And then some.”

I picked a table in the corner where we could not be overheard by other customers. . . thereby ensuring that we could be overheard by an Ear. But, aboard ship, how can one avoid an Ear? You can’t.

We were served, then I said to him almost silently, “Can you read lips?”

“Not very well,” he admitted at the same low level.

“Very well, let’s keep it as low as possible and hope that random noise will confuse the Ear. Mac, tell me one thing: Have you raped any other helpless females lately?”

He flinched. I don’t think anyone can be hit that hard and not flinch. But he paid me the courtesy of respecting my brain and showed that he was a brain, too, by answering, “Miss Friday, how did you recognize me?”

“Odor,” I answered. “Odor at first; you sat too close to me. Then, as we left the theater, I forced on you a voice check. And I stumbled on the stairs and forced you to put your arms around me. That did it. Is there an Ear on us here?”

“Probably. But it may not be recording and it is possible that no one is monitoring it now.”

“Too much.” I worried it. Walk side by side on the promenade? An Ear would have trouble with that setup without continuous tracking, but tracking could be automatic if Mac had a beacon on him. Or I myself might be booby-trapped. Aquarius Pool? Acoustics in a swimming pool are always bad, which was good. But, damn it, I needed more privacy. “Leave your drink and come with me.”

I took him to cabin BB. Shizuko let us in. So far as I could tell she stood a twenty-four-hour watch except that she slept when I did. Or I thought she did. I asked her, “What do we have later, Shizuko?”

“Purser’s party, Missy. Nineteen o’clock.”

“I see. Go take a walk or something. Come back in one hour.”

“Too late. Thirty minutes.”

“One hour!”

She answered humbly, “Yes, Missy”Äbut not before I caught her glance at him and his scant five-millimeter nod.

With Shizuko gone and the door bolted I said quietly, “Are you her boss or is she yours?”

“Some argument,” he admitted. “Maybe `cooperating independent agents’ describes it.”

“I see. She’s quite professional. Mac, do you know where the Ears are in here or will we have to work out some way to defeat them? Are you willing to have your sordid past discussed and recorded on tape somewhere? I can’t think of anything that would embarrass meÄafter all, I was the innocent victimÄbut I want you to speak freely.”

Instead of answering he pointed: over my couch on the lounge side, over the head of my bed, into my bathroomÄthen he touched his eye and pointed to a spot where the bulkhead met the overhead opposite the couch.

I nodded. Then I dragged two chairs off into the corner farthest from the couch and out of line of sight for the Eye location he had indicated. I switched on the terminal, punched it for music, selected a tape featuring the Salt Lake City Choir. Perhaps an Ear could reach through and sort out our voices but I did not think so.

We sat down and I continued, “Mac, can you think of any good reason why I should not kill you right now?”

“Just like that? Without even a hearing?”

“Why do we need a hearing? You raped me. You know it, I know it. But I am giving you this much of a hearing. Can you think of any reason why you should not be summarily executed for your crime?”

“Well, since you put it that wayÄ No, I can’t.”

Men will be the death of me. “Mac, you are a most exasperating man. Can’t you see that I don’t want to kill you and am looking for a

reasonable excuse not to do so? But I can’t manage it without your help. How did you get mixed up in so dirty a business as a gang rape of a blindfolded, helpless woman?”

I sat and let him stew and that’s just what he did. At last he said, “I could claim that I was so deep into it by then that, if I balked at raping you, I would have been killed myself, right then.”