“Tell him? Ask questions? Lysander, it is you who must answer questions and not that Senior! He is displeased with you.”
Lysander stretched and yawned. “That makes two of us,” he said in English. “Go now.”
“For this,” she promised, “you will swallow your own spit!” Fuming, she hurried back to the radio in her room.
Lysander didn’t hurry. He methodically pulled on his clothes, then paused in the bathroom to relieve himself and wash his face before he followed. By the time he was in Polly’s room he had made up his mind what he wanted to say. Polly was crouched over the radio, muttering into it. She looked up malignantly as Lysander came in, and hissed in astonishment when he ordered, “Leave us. I want to speak to ChinTekki-tho in private.”
“That is foolish and improper for you to say!” she cried. “Why should I leave you?”
“Because if you do not,” he told her, “I will not speak to ChinTekki-tho.” He waited patiently until she left, licking her tongue out in baffled annoyance; then he turned to the radio.
He spoke in English and left off the honorific in the name. “ChinTekki,” he said, “why was I not told that there was to be a landing in Africa?”
It took a second for the response to come, but then ChinTekki-tho’s tone was icy. “Speak of such things in Hakh’hli and not in the Earth language!” he commanded. “Why do you ask such questions in such tone?”
“Because I have been kept from information and not informed fully,” Lysander said. “Must I learn of Hakh’hli plans from Earth humans and not from Hakh’hli?”
The pause was longer than the round-trip required. Then ChinTekki-tho said slowly, “It was not your habit to speak to me in this fashion, Lysander. Why have you changed?”
“Perhaps I’ve grown up a little,” Lysander said.
“Perhaps you have grown more Earthly,” the Hakh’hli said thoughtfully. “It is said that you caused injury to one Earth-female through amphylaxis, Lysander. Why did you do that?”
Lysander flushed. “I caused her no permanent harm. Is it not privilege of Earth-human male to perform amphylaxis with Earth-human female? Am I not Earth-human male?”
“It appears,” ChinTekki-tho sighed, “that you are, indeed. Certainly you are no longer true Hakh’hli, for Hakh’hli would not speak in such tone to this Senior.”
“Perhaps,” Lysander snapped, “Hakh’hli would not have such cause. I was not informed of any plan to visit Africa.”
“But why should we not do this?” ChinTekki-tho asked reasonably. “What value has Africa to Earth humans?”
“It’s theirs!”
Lysander could hear the reproachful hiss. “Africa is not in use,” ChinTekko-tho said stubbornly. “We ask little of Earth humans and not very much at all. We ask an island so that railgun can be built to benefit both Hakh’hli and Earth humans, and Earth humans respond that cannot be because inhabitants object. Will they now tell us we cannot have empty Africa because elephants will object?”
Lysander frowned. “I do not understand,” he said. “What is value of Africa to Hakh’hli?”
ChinTekki-tho said sternly, “That is for Major Seniors to decide and not to be decided by one young person not fully mature.” There was silence for a moment, then the voice from the radio resumed, its tone heavy. “I had hoped to speak more profitably to you, Lysander. I perceive that cannot happen. So there will be no more discussion with you. I will speak privately with Hippolyta now. You, Lysander, think carefully of what you do—for remember, it was Hakh’hli, not Earth humans, who gave you life!”
When Lysander reached the hospital Marguery Darp was not in her room. A nurse showed him to a solarium lounge, where Marguery was talking on the telephone. She was dressed and apparently ready to leave, but when she put down the phone she patted a space on the couch beside her. She looked at him inquiringly. “Is something the matter, Sandy?” she asked.
He laughed at her. “Which something do you want to hear about?” he asked.
“You pick,” she said, and listened carefully as he told her about his unsatisfactory conversation with ChinTekki-tho. She looked different today, he thought—not ill, at all; not hostile; not even remote, but somehow more serious than she had seemed before. When he finished she commented, “It looks as though they’ve got more plans for Africa than they’ve told us. Did he say anything about what they’re building out there?”
Lysander was startled. “Building? No. Are they building something?”
“It looks like it,” she said. She hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Lysander? You know we’ve been taping the Hakh’hli transmissions. Would you be willing to translate some of them?”
He frowned over that. “The reason they’re in Hakh’hli is that they don’t want humans to hear them,” he pointed out.
“Naturally. But if they aren’t up to anything, why shouldn’t we know what they’re saying?”
Another hard question to think about. While he was thinking, Marguery added softly, “As a favor to me, maybe?” Then she saw the sudden expression of pain on his face. “What’s the matter?”
He said gruffly, “I’m confused. Are we falling in love, or what?”
She answered him in perfect seriousness. “The only way to tell that is to wait and see how it comes out, I think.”
“Yes, but—but it’s all so mixed up! Are we friends? Or sweethearts? Are we going to get married? Or is all this just because you were assigned to keep me interested so you can spy on me?”
She flared at him, “That was my assignment, yes. In the beginning. What’s wrong with that? Weren’t you assigned to spy on us?”
He scowled. “Well—sort of, I suppose.”
“So we’re even on that, aren’t we? Sandy, dear,” she said, putting her hand on his, “we’ve got two different things going here. One is you and me, and that’ll just have to work itself out however it comes. The other’s a little more urgent. That’s the human race and the Hakh’hli, and you have to decide what side you’re on. Now.”
He looked at her angrily. “Why do I have to take sides?”
“Because there are two sides,” she said firmly, “and there’s no room in the middle. Will you translate?”
He thought it over for a long moment. Then he decided. “If there’s nothing bad in what the Hakh’hli are saying to each other, then I’m not doing them any harm by translating, am I? And if there is—all right,” he said, standing up, “I’ll do it. Let’s take you home.”
She stood up too. “That’s my boy,” she said, applauding. “Only we’re not going home right now.”
“But I thought that was what I came here to do.”
“Dear Sandy,” she said, half-affectionate, half-somber, “you can take me home later. Maybe even often. But right now we’ve got somewhere else to go.”
The “somewhere else” was a windowless, gray granite building that bore a legend incised on its stone facade:
INTERSEC
YORK COMMONWEALTH
DIVISION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE
It was neither surprising to Lysander nor reassuring. They paused at a garage ramp, where Marguery opened the car window and displayed a medallion to a guard. Then they were passed into an underground garage.
Hamilton Boyle was waiting for them at the elevator. “Through there,” he ordered Sandy, pointing at a flat-topped archway. Marguery didn’t say anything; she just motioned to Sandy to go first. As he passed through it he saw a uniformed woman studying a screen beside the arch and realized he had just been inspected for weapons.
“What’s this all about?” he demanded.
“You’ll see. We have to go up to the third floor,” Boyle said.
At least Marguery took Sandy’s hand in the elevator. Boyle noticed, but didn’t comment. When the elevator door opened at the floor a tall, elderly woman with a gun strapped to her belt was standing before a control panel. She nodded to Boyle and pushed a button. To their right a metal-barred gate slid noiselessly back, and Boyle motioned Sandy to pass through.
An armed guard! A prison door! Sandy had seen such things only on television, but he knew what they meant.
He released Marguery’s hand and confronted Hamilton Boyle. “Are you arresting me?” he demanded.
Boyle gave him an unfriendly look. “Why would I do that? We’re on the same side—I hope.”
“Then what?”
“I want to show you something,” Boyle said grimly, motioning for them to enter a room. In the center of the room, almost filling it, was a conference table, with half a dozen chairs around it. On one wall was a large television screen. “Sit down,” Boyle commanded, and took his place at a console.
As the room lights went dim Lysander looked at Marguery and got a faint, unreassuring smile back. Then the screen lit up.
They were looking at the Hakh’hli ship again. It glowed as clearly as before. But it was not the same as before.