‘You unbearably, conceited jerk! Why, I’d rather…’
‘Get out! And this time, stay out!’
Belle got out – and if the door and frame had not been built of super-steel, both would have been wrecked by the blast of energy she loosed in closing the door behind her.
In her own room, with Gunther blocks full on, she threw herself face down on the bed and cried as she had not cried since she was a child.
And finally, without even taking off her clothes, she cried herself to sleep.
EIGHT
Next morning, early, Belle tapped lightly on Garlock’s door.
‘Come in.’
She did so. ‘Have you had your coffee?’
‘Yes.’
‘So have I.’
Neither Belle nor Garlock had recovered; both faces showed strain and drain.
‘I think we’d better break this up,’ she said quietly.
‘Check. We’ll have to, if we expect to get any work done.’
Belle could not conceal her surprise.
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‘Oh, not for the reason you think,’ Garlock went on, quickly. ‘Your record as a man-killer is still one hundred point zero zero zero percent. I’ve been in love with you ever since we paired. Before that, even.’
‘Like hell,’ she snorted inelegantly. ‘Why, I…”
‘Keep still a minute. And I’m not going to fight with you again. Ever. I’m not going to touch you again until I can control myself a lot better than I could last night.’
‘Oh? That was mostly my fault, of course. But in love? Oh no – I’ve seen men in love. You aren’t, and I couldn’t make you be, not with the best I could do. Not even in bed.’
‘Perhaps I’m an atypical case. I’m not raving about your perfect body – you already know what that’s like. Nor about your mind, which is the only one I know of as good as my own. Maybe I’m in love with what I think you ought to be … or what I hope you will be. Anyway, I’m in love with something connected with you – and no other woman alive. Shall we go eat?’
‘Okay; let’s.’
They joined Lola and James at the table; and if either noticed anything out of the ordinary, neither made any sign.
And after breakfast, out in the Main —
‘About three weeks, Jim, you think?’ Garlock asked.
‘Give or take a couple of days, yes.’
‘And Belle and I would just be in the way – at least until time to show Deggi about the activation. And all those Primes to organize… We’d better leave you here, don’t you think, and get going?’
‘Ill buy that.’
Lola and James moved a few personal belongings planet-side; Garlock and Belle shot the Pleiades across a vast gulf of space to one of the planets they had scanned so fleetingly on their preliminary survey. Its name was, both remembered, Lizoria; its two Primes were named Rezdo Semolo and Mirea Mitala – male and female, respectively.
After sending down a very brief and perfunctory request for audience – which was in effect a declaration of intent and nothing else – Garlock and Belle teleported themselves down into Semolo’s office, where both Lizorian Primes were.
Both got up out of their peculiar-looking chairs to face their
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visitors. Both were tall and peculiarly thin – not the thinness of emaciation, but that of bodily structure.
‘On them it looks good,’ Belle tight-beamed to Garlock
Both moved fast and with exquisite control; both were extraordinarily graceful. ‘Snaky’ was Belle’s thought of the woman; ‘sinuous’ was Oarlock’s of the man. Both were completely hairless, of body and of head – not by nature, but via electric-shaver clipping. Both wore sandals. The man wore shorts and a shirt-like garment of nylon or its like; the woman wore just enough ribbons and bands to hold a hundred thousand credits’ worth of jewels in place. She appeared to be about twenty years – Tellurian equivalent – old; he was probably three or four years older.
‘We did not invite you in and we do not want you here,’ Semolo said coldly. ‘So get out, both of you. If you don’t, when I count three I’ll throw you out, and I won’t be too careful about how many of your bones I break. One… Two…’
‘Pipe down, Rezdo!’ the girl exclaimed. They have something we haven’t, or they wouldn’t be here. Whatever it is, we want it.’
‘Oh, let him try, Miss Mitala,’ Garlock said, through her hard-held block, in the depth of her mind. ‘He won’t hurt us a bit and it may do him some good. While he’s wasting effort I’ll compare notes with my partner here, Galactic Vice-Admiral Belle Bellamy. I’m glad to see that one of you has at least part of a brain.’
‘… Three!’ Semolo did his best, with everything he had, without even attracting Oarlock’s attention. He then tried to leap at the intruder physically, despite the latter’s tremendous advantage in weight and muscle, but found that he could not move.
Then, through Belle’s solidly-set blocks, Garlock asked, ‘How are you coming? Getting anywhere?’
‘My God!’ came Belle’s mental shriek. ‘What – how can -but no, you didn’t give that to Fao, surely!’
‘I’ll say I didn’t – nor to Delcamp. But you’re going to need it, I’m thinking.’
‘But can you? Even if you would – and I’m just beginning to realize how big a man you really are – can that kind of stuff be
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taught? I probably haven’t got the braincells it takes to handle it.’
‘I’m not sure, but I’ve reworked our Prime Fields into one and made a few other changes. Theoretically, it ought to work. Shall I come in and try it?’
‘Don’t be an idiot, darling. Of course!’
As impersonally as a surgeon exploring an organ, Garlock went into Belle’s mind. ‘Tune to the field … that’s it – fine! Then – I’ll do it real slow, and watch me closely – you do it like so … get it?’
‘Oh, lovely!’ Belle breathed excitedly. ‘Got it!’
‘Then this … and this … and there you are. You can try it on me, if you like.’
‘Oh no. No sale. I don’t need practice and I’d like to preserve the beautiful illusion that maybe I could crack your shield if I wanted to. No, I’ll work on Miss Snake-Hips here -but say, I’ll bet there’s a bone in it. You can block even that, can’t you?’
‘Yes. The block works like this.’ He showed her. ‘It takes full mastery of the Prime Field, but I see you’ve got that.’
‘Oh, wonderful! Thanks, Clee darling. But do you actually mean to say that I can now block you or any other Prime out completely?’
‘You’re going too far. Me, yes – but don’t forget that there very well may be people – or things – as far ahead of us as we are ahead of pointer pups.’
‘Hah! Like hell! I just know, Clee, that you’re the absolute tops of the whole universe.’
‘Well, we can dream, of course.’ Garlock withdrew his mind from Belle’s and turned his attention to the now quiet Semolo. ‘Well, my overconfident and contumacious young squirt, are you done horsing around or do you want to keep it up until you addle completely what few brains you have?’
The Lizorian made no reply; he merely glared.
‘The trouble with you half-baked, juvenile Primes is that you know too damned much that isn’t true. As an old Tellurian saying hath it, you’re “too big for your britches”.
‘Thus, simply because you have lived a few years on a single planet and haven’t met anyone able to slap you down, you’ve sold yourself on the idea that there’s nobody, anywhere, who
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can. You’re wrong – in fact, you couldn’t be wronger.
‘What, actually, have you done? What, actually, have you got? Practically nothing. You haven’t even started a starship; you’ve scarcely started making plans. You realize dimly that the theory is not in any of the books, that you’ll have to dig it out for yourself, but that is work. So you’re still just posing and throwing your weight around.
‘As a matter of fact, you’re merely a drop in a – not in a tubful, but a lake. There are thousands of millions of planets, and thousands of millions of Prime Operators. Most of them are probably a lot stronger than you are; many of them may be stronger than my partner and I are. I am not at all certain that you will pass even the first screening; but since you are without question a Prime Operator, I will deliver the message we came to deliver. Miss Mitala, do you want to listen or shall we drive it into you, too?’
‘I want to listen to anyone or anything who has a working starship and who can do what you have just done.’
‘Very well.’ And Garlock told the general-distribution version of the story of the Galactic Service.