“He’s little,” Merry said, “for guard-type.”
That was so too.
A smile took her, sudden surety. “Outsider. One of Tallen’s folk.”
It hit to the mark. The pale eyes shifted from hers.
“O man,” she said softly. “To go to that extent . . . or did you know what you were getting into when you set that mark on yourself?”
There was no more resistance, none. In that moment she felt a touch of pity, seeing the young Outsider’s desperation. Twenty-nine. He did not look that.
“What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Tom Mundy.”
“You are Tallen’s. Easier with him, Max. I doubt he’s here to do murder. I rather well think he realises he’s made a mistake. And I wonder if we haven’t swept up something utterly by chance. Haven’t we, Tom Mundy?”
“Let me go.”
“Let him go, Max. But,” she added at once as the young Outsider braced himself for escape, “you’ll not make it across the City like that, Tom Mundy.”
He looked as if he were on the brink of madness. Some shred of sense held him to listen.
“I’ll send you to Tallen,” she said, “without asking you a thing. But if you’d like a drink and a place to sit down, while my people finish checking things out, it would be more convenient for us.”
“Outsider-human,” Warrior murmured in mingled tones.
The Outsider began to weep, tears running down his face; and would have sat down where he was, but that Jim and Merry took him in hand and led him up to the porch, to the door.
iv
There was at least for the time, quiet in the house—stirrings in the back, noises in the basement, but nothing visible in the main room.
And the azi who had been Tom Mundy sat on the couch clutching a drink in his hands and staring at the floor.
“I would like,” Raen said softly, “one simple question answered, if you would.” Jim was by her, and she indicated a place by her; Jim sat down, settled back with a disapproving look.
Mundy slowly lifted his head, apprehension on his face.
“How,” Raen asked, “did you find yourself in such circumstances? Did you come to spy on me? Or did someone put you there?”
He said nothing.
“All right,” she said. “I won’t insist. But I’m guessing it looked like a means for information. And you made a mistake. A real azi number, real papers, guard-status: a spy could pick up a great deal of information that way, and no one would shut an azi away from communications equipment. I’d guess you make regular reports to Tallen, because no one would suspect you’d do such a thing. But it went wrong, I’m guessing.”
He swallowed heavily. “You said that I could go.”
“The car’s being brought. Max and one of the others will deliver you to Tallen’s doorstep—a surprise to him, perhaps. How long were you in those pits?”
“I don’t know,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t know.”
“You didn’t plan coming here, then.” She read the man’s apprehensions and leaned back, shrugged off the question. “You’ll get to Tallen alive, don’t fear that. You’ll come to no harm. How long have you been working on this world?”
Again an avoidance of her eyes.
“There are more of you,” she said. “Aren’t there?”
She obtained a distraught stare.
“Probably,” she said, “I’ve bought more than one of you and haven’t detected it. I own every guard-azi contract available on this continent. I’d sort you out if I could. You’ve been standing guard in ITAK establishments, gathering information, passing it along to Tallen. Of no possible concern to me. Actually I favor the enterprise. That’s why I’m making a present of you to him. I’d advise you, though, if you know of others in that group, you tell me. There are others, aren’t there?”
He took a drink, said nothing.
“Did you know what you were getting into?”
He wiped at his face and leaned his head on his hand, answer enough.
“Tell Tallen,” she said, “I’ll pull his men out if he’ll give me the necessary numbers. I doubt you know them.”
“I don’t,” he said.