Questioner told him to wait outside, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. Now what? Before she had a chance to think, Marool Mantelby was at the door. Her staff had advised her of this strange disappearance. Could she offer any help?
Questioner, regarding the woman with close attention, saw that she panted, her skin was flushed and her eyes darted in heightened excitement of a feral sort.
“I think it likely they have gone off on some expedition of their own,” murmured Questioner.
“Then … they may be gone for some little while?” asked Marool, licking the corner of her lips.
“Does this cause some domestic disruption?”
“Not at all. I merely … wondered.”
The Questioner smiled her meaningless, social smile. “Do not fret over it, Madam Mantelby. I’m sure all will be explained.”
Marool bowed her way out with suspicious alacrity, Questioner staring after her, trying to decipher what the woman was up to. The understeward was still standing in the hall, and Questioner beckoned to him through the open door.
“Ma’am,” he said respectfully.
“Will you lead me to the quarters where our missing staff members stayed?”
The understeward bowed and led the way out into the wide, deeply carpeted corridor. The suite given over to the staff members was on the same level, though around several corners and down a long side corridor almost to the end. At the door, Questioner told the understeward to wait while she went in. There she stood looking slowly around herself. All the belongings one would expect were there, some neatly packed into cases, others piled ready for packing.
Questioner approached the wall, examining it with sensors in the tips of her fingers, moving along it, centimeter by centimeter. After a time, she touched an ornamental cartouche and stepped back as the wall swung open. She looked through into a passageway that ran in both directions behind the wall. Questioner touched the cartouche again, and the wall closed silently upon itself.
“I read no evidence that mankind has ever been in that corridor,” she murmured to herself, as she did sometimes when alone, impressing the things she saw into memory with the words she spoke. “No Earthian, no settler, none of my non-Earthian aides. There is evidence of some other living thing, however. The same living things I sensed in the little houses behind the gardener’s quarters.”
She moved around the room, trying several other manipulations with similar effect. At the fourth hidden door she said to herself, “Here. They went in here. I can smell them. All of them. I scent Ellin’s perfume.” She shut the opening and turned away, eyes unfocused.
“Madam Questioner … ?” queried the understeward from outside in the hall.
“One moment,” she said, going on with her interior colloquy. “Did Mantelby do this? No. For if she had known about these sneakways in her walls, she would not have come to us to ask about our missing people. She would have searched for them herself, lest the abduction be laid at her door. No, the people who built them, the people who use them, are not mankind. Human, yes, probably, as Haraldson denned human, but not mankind.”
She strolled toward the door. “So now, upon this stage, the indigenes appear, almost magically. How interesting. Now, what did they want with my witless entourage and my two good little dancers? Hmmm?”
In the doorway she stopped, looking around once more. “I find an interesting pattern: The planet was settled by mankind, and all the original settlers disappeared. Then it was settled again by mankind; this time the settlers didn’t disappear. Almost as though whatever had taken the first bunch had learned whatever it needed to know about mankind. Then we come along, bringing with us examples of several races that are fully mankind but different in appearance, and whoops, they disappear. As though whoever took them wanted to try a new flavor?
“But for what? And did they also seize up Ellin and Bao, or did those two adventurous children go off after them?”
She threw back her head, saying in a loud voice, “I hereby announce my intention of going wherever my staff members have been taken. I would appreciate an escort, but if none is provided, I will take whatever route I can find.”