“I understand you demanded to see me,” he said and handed me a gadget and looped a similar one around his neck, with an attachment to the left ear and the Adam’s apple. I followed suit.
“Look here, Danger,” his voice peeped in my ear. “There’s nothing I can do for you! You knew that when you came here. Insistence on seeing me serves merely to implicate Ahax.”
“Who are you kidding?” I sub-vocalized. “They know all about the mission. Something leaked. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“That’s neither here nor there. Your duty now is to avoid any appearance that yours is an official mission.”
“You think they’re dumb enough to believe I’m in the spy business for myself?”
“See here, Danger, don’t meddle in affairs that are beyond your grasp! You were selected for this mission because of your total illiteracy in matters of policy.”
“Let’s quit kidding,” I said. “Why do you think they let you see me?”
“Let me? They practically kidnaped me!”
“Sure; this is a test. They want to see what you’ll do. Species loyalty is a big thing with them—I learned that much studying tapes, back on Ahax. Every time they capture and execute a Man with no reaction from his home world, they get a little bolder.”
“This is nonsense, a desperate bid for rescue—”
“You made a mistake, seeing me, Mister Consul. You can’t pretend you don’t know me, now. Better get me out of this; if you don’t, I’ll spill the beans.”
“What’s that?” He looked shocked. “What can you tell them? You know nothing of the actual—” He cut himself off.
“I can tell them all about you, for a starter,” I told him.
“Tell them what about me?”
“That you’re the mastermind of the Ahacian espionage ring here on the Rish world,” I said. “And everything else I can think of. Some of it might even be true.”
He got his back stiffened up and gave me the old ice-blue glare. “You’d play the treacher to the Ahacian Assembly, which trusted you?”
“You bureaucrats have a curious confidence in the power of one-way loyalty. You’d sell me down the river just to maintain a polite diplomatic lie; and you expect me to go, singing glad hosannas.”
He struggled some more, but I had him hooked in the eye. In the end he said he’d see what he could do and went away, mopping his forehead. The oysters hustled me into an elevator and took me down into what must have been a sub-sub-basement and made me crawl through a four-foot tunnel into a dim-lit room with a strange, unpleasant smell. I was still sniffing and trying to remember what it was about the odor that made my scalp crawl when something moved in the deep gloom of the far corner and an armored, four-foot midget rose up on a set of thick legs and two oversized eyes stared at me from the middle of its chest.
2
For the first five seconds I stood where I was, feeling the shock reaction slamming through my brain. Then, without any conscious decision on my part, I was diving for it. It tried to scuttle aside, but I landed on it, grabbed for what passed for its throat. Its body arced under me and the stubby legs beat against the floor, and it broke free and went for the exit tunnel, making a sound like water gurgling down a drain. I kicked it away from the opening and it curled up and rolled to a neutral corner and I stood over it, breathing hard and looking for a soft spot to attack.
“Peace!” the word sounded grotesque coming from what looked like an oversized armadillo. “I yield, Master! Have mercy on poor Srat!” Then it made sounds that were exactly like an Australian bush baby—or a crying child.
“That’s right,” I said, and my voice had a high, quavering note. I could feel the gooseflesh on my arms, just from being this close to the thing. “I’m not ready to kill you yet. First you’re going to tell me things!”
“Yes, Master! Poor Srat will tell Master everything he knows! All, all!”
“There was a ship—wasp-waisted, copper-colored, big. It answered our distress call. Bugs like you came out of it. They shot me up, but I guess they didn’t know much human anatomy. And they took the Lady Raire. Where did they take her? Where is she? What did they do to her?”
“Master, let poor Srat think!” it gurgled, and I realized I’d been kicking it with every question mark.
“Don’t think—just give me the answers.” I drew a deep breath and felt the rage draining away and my hands started to shake from the reaction.
“Master, poor Srat doesn’t understand about the lady—” It oof’ed in anticipation when I took a step toward it.
“The ship, yes,” it babbled. “Long ago poor Srat remembers such a ship, all in the beauty of its mighty form, like a great mother. But that was long, long ago!”
“Three years,” I said. “On a world out in the Arm.”
“No, Master! Forty years have passed away since last poor Srat glimpsed the great mother-shape! And that was deep in Fringe Space—” It stopped suddenly, as if it had said too much, and I kicked it again.
“Poor Srat is in exile,” it whined. “So far, so far from the heaving, oil-black bosom of the deeps of H’eeaq.”
“Is that where they took her? To H’eeaq?”
It groaned. “Weep for great H’eeaq, Master. Weep for poor Srat’s memories of that which was once, and can never be again. . . .”
I listened to the blubbering and groaning, and piece by piece, got the story from it: H’eeaq, a lone world, a hundred lights out toward Galactic Zenith, where Center spread over the sky like a blazing roof; the discovery that the sun was on the verge of a nova explosion; the flight into space, the years—centuries—of gypsy wandering. And a landing on a Rish-controlled world, a small brush with the Rish law—and forty years of slavery. By the time it was finished, I was sitting on the bench by the wall, feeling cold, washed out of all emotion, for the first time in three years. Kicking this poor waif wouldn’t bring the Lady Raire back home. That left me with nothing at all.
“And Master?” poor Srat whimpered. “Has Master, too, aroused the cruel ire of these Others?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that. They’re using me for a test case—” I cut myself off. I wasn’t ready to start gossiping with the thing.
“Master—poor Srat can tell Master many things about these Rishes. Things that will help him.”
“It’s a little late for that,” I said. “I’ve already had my say. Humekoy wasn’t impressed.”
The H’eeaq crept closer to me. “No, Master, listen to poor Srat: Of mercy, the Rish-things know nothing. But in matters of business ethic . . .”
3
I was asleep when they came for me. Four guards with symbols painted on their backs herded me along to a circular room where a lone Rish who might have been Humekoy sat behind a desk under a spotlight. Other Rish came in, took seats along the walls behind me. My buddy, the Ahacian consul, was nowhere in sight.
“What will you offer for your freedom?” the presiding Rish asked bluntly.
I stood there remembering what poor Srat had told me about the Rish and wondering whether to believe him.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You offer nothing for your life?”
“It’s already mine. If you kill me you’ll be stealing.”
“And if we imprison you?”
“Stealing is stealing. My life is mine, not yours.”
I felt the silent buzzing that meant they were talking it over. Then Humekoy picked up two rods, a white one and a red one, from the desk. He held the white one out to me.
“You will depart the Rish world at once,” he said. “Take this symbol of Rish magnanimity and go.”
I shook my head, and felt the sweat start up. “I’ll take my life and freedom because it’s mine, not as a gift. I don’t want any gifts from you; no gifts at all.”
“You refuse the mercy of the Hierarch?” Humekoy’s canned voice went up off the scale.
“All I want is what’s mine.”
More silent conversation. Humekoy put the rods back on the desk.
“Then go, Captain Danger. You have your freedom.”
“What about my crew?”
“They are guilty. They will pay their debt.”
“They’re no good to you. I suppose you’ve already pumped them dry. Why not let them go?”
“Ah, you crave a gift after all?”
“No. I’ll pay for them.”
“So? What payment do you offer?”
Poor Srat had briefed me on this, too. I knew what I had to do, but my mouth felt dry and my stomach was quivering. We bargained for ten minutes before we agreed on a price.